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~Whip and Spur. 



GEORGE E. WARING, Jr. 

(FORMERLY COLONEL OF THE 4TH MISSOURI CAVALRY, U. S. V.) 



Mainly Reprinted frofn the Atlantic Monthly. 



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BOSTON: 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 
1875. 



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COPYRIGHT, 1875. 

By GEORGE E. WARING, Jr. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



HUNN HANSON and ALFRED VEZIN, 



IN MEMOR V OF THE 



lb Pag* 



(AND NIGHTS) . 



♦ 



CONTENTS. 



— ♦ — 

Page 

Vix 7 

Ruby 34 

Wettstein ....... 67 

Campaigning with Max .... 93 

How I got my Overcoat ..... 138 

Two Scouts 162 

In the Gloaming 186 

Pox-Hunting in England .... 201 



WHIP AND SPUR. 



VIX. 




HEN the work on the Central Park had 
fairly commenced, in the spring of 1858, 
I found — or I fancied — that proper 
attention to my scattered duties made it neces- 
sary that I should have a saddle-horse. 

How easily, by the way, the arguments that 
convince us of these pleasant necessities find 
their way to the understanding ! 

Yet, how to subsist a horse after buying one, 
and how to buy 1 The memory of a well-bred 
and keen-eyed gray, dating back to the earliest 
days of my boyhood, and forming the chief fea- 
ture of my recollection of play-time for years ; 



8 WHIP AND SPUR. 

an idle propensity, not a whit dulled yet, to 
linger over Leech's long-necked hunters, and 
Herring's field scenes; an almost superstitious 
faith in the different analyses of the bones of 
the racer and of the cart-horse; a firm belief 
in Frank Forester's teachings of the value of 
" blood," — all these conspired to narrow my 
range of selection, and, unfortunately, to con- 
fine it to a very expensive class of horses. 

Unfortunately, again, the commissioners of the 
Park had extremely inconvenient ideas of econ- 
omy, and evidently did not consider, in fixing 
their schedule of salaries, how much more satis- 
factory our positions would have been with more 
generous emolument. 

How a man with only a Park salary, and with 
a family to support, could set up a saddle-horse, 
— and not ride to the dogs, — was a question that 
exercised not a little of my engineering talent 
for weeks ; and many an odd corner of plans and 
estimates was figured over with calculations of 
the cost of forage and shoeing. 

Stable-room was plenty and free in the con- 



VIX. 9 

demned buildings of the former occupants, and 
a little " over-time " of one of the men would 
suffice for the grooming. 

I finally concluded that, by giving up cigars, 
and devoting my energies to the pipe in their 
stead, I could save enough to pay for my horse's 
keep ; and so, the ways and means having been, 
in this somewhat vague manner, provided, the 
next step was to buy a horse. To tell of the 
days passed at auction sales in the hope (never 
there realized) of finding goodness and cheapness 
combined, — of the stationery wasted in answer- 
ing advertisements based on every conceivable 
form of false pretence ; to describe the number- 
less broken-kneed, broken-winded, and broken- 
down brutes that came under inspection, — would 
be tedious and disheartening. 

Good horses there were, of course, though very 
few good saddle-horses (America is not productive 
in this direction), — and the possible animals were 
held at impossible prices. 

Those who rode over the new Park lands usu- 
ally rode anything but good saddle-horses. Fast 
1* 



10 WHIP AND SPUE. 

trotters, stout ponies, tolerable carriage-horses, 
capital cart-horses, there were in plenty. But 
the clean-cut, thin-crested, bright-eyed, fine-eared, 
steel-limbed saddle-horse, the saddle-horse par ex- 
cellence, — may I say the only saddle-horse 1 — 
rarely came under observation ; and when, by ex- 
ception, such a one did appear, he was usually so 
ridden that his light was sadly dimmed. It was 
hard to recognize an elastic step under such an 
unelastic seat. 

Finally, in the days of my despair, a kind sad- 
dler, — kept to his daily awl by a too keen eye 
for sport, and still, I believe, a victim to his pro- 
pensity for laying his money on the horse that 
ought to win but don't, — hearing of my ambi- 
tion (to him the most laudable of all ambitions), 
came to put me on the long-sought path. 

He knew a mare, or he had known one, that 
would exactly suit me. She was in a bad way 
now, and a good deal run down, but he always 
thought she " had it in her," and that some gen- 
tleman ought to keep her for the saddle, — 
" which, in my mind, sir, she be the finest bit of 



VI x. 11 

'orse-flesh that was hever imported, sir." That 
was enough. "Imported" decided my case, and 
I listened eagerly to the enthusiastic story, — a 
story to which this man's life was bound with 
threads of hard-earned silver, and not less by a 
real honest love for a fine animal. He had never 
been much given to saving, but he was a good 
workman, and the little he had saved had been 
blown away in the dust that clouded his favorite 
at the tail of the race. 

Still, he attached himself to her person, and 
followed her in her disgrace. " She were n't quite 
quick enough for the turf, sir, but she be a good 
'un for a gentleman's 'ack." 

He had watched her for years, and scraped 
acquaintance with her different owners as fast as 
she had changed them, and finally, when she was 
far gone with pneumonia, he had accepted her as 
a gift, and, by careful nursing, had cured her. 
Then, for a time, he rode her himself, and his eye 
brightened as he told of her leaps and her stride. 
Of course he rode her to the races, and — one 
luckless day — when he had lost everything, and 



12 WHIP AND SPUR. 

his passion had got the better of his prudence, 
he stalled the mare herself on a perfectly sure 
thing in two-mile-heats. Like most of the sure 
things of life, this venture went to the bad, and 
the mare was lost, — lost to a Bull's Head dealer 
in single driving horses. " I see her in his stable 
ahfter that, sir; and, forbieten she were twelve 
year old, sir, and 'ad 'ad a 'ard life of it, she were 
the youngest and likeliest of the lot, — you'd 
swore she were a three-year-old, sir." 

If that dealer had had a soul above trotting- 
wagons, my story would never have been written ; 
but all was fish that came to his net, and this 
thoroughbred racer, this beautiful creature who 
had never worn harness in her life, must be 
shown to a purchaser who was seeking something 
to drive. She was always quick to decide, and 
her actions followed close on the heels of her 
thought. She did not complicate matters by 
waiting for the gentleman to get into the wagon, 
but then and there — on the instant — kicked it 
to kindlings. This ended the story. She had 
been shown at a high figure, and was subse- 



VIX. 13 

quently sold for a song, — he could tell me no 
more. She had passed to the lower sphere of 
equine life and usefulness, — he had heard of a 
fish-wagon, but he knew nothing about it. What 
he did know was, that the dealer was a dreadful 
jockey, and that it would never do to ask him. 
Now, here was something to live for, — a sort of 
princess in disgrace, whom it would be an honor 
to rescue, and my horse-hunting acquired a new 
interest. 

By easy stages, I cultivated the friendship of 
the youth who, in those days, did the morning's 
sweeping-out at the Bull's Head Hotel. He had 
grown up in the alluring shades of the horse- 
market, and his daily communion from childhood 
had been with that "noble animal." To him 
horses were the individuals of the world, — men 
their necessary attendants, and of only attendant 
importance. Of course he knew of this black she- 
devil; and he thought that "a hoss that could 
trot like she could on the halter " must be crazy 
not to go in harness. 

However, he thought she had got her deserts 



14 WHIP AND SPUR. . 

now, for he had seen her, only a few weeks before, 
"a draggin' clams for a feller in the Tenth Ave- 
ner." Here was a clew at last, — clams and the 
Tenth Avenue. For several days the scent grew 
cold. The people of the Licensed Vender part of 
this street seemed to have little interest in their 
neighbors' horses ; but I found one man, an Irish 
grocer, who had been bred a stable-boy to the 
Marquis of Waterford, and who did know of a 
"poor old screw of a black mare " that had a good 
head, and might be the one I was looking for; 
but, if she was, he thought I might as well give it 
up, for she was all broken down, and would never 
be good for anything again. 

Taking the address, I went to a stable-yard, in 
what was then the very edge of the town, and 
here I found a knowing 3 r oung man, who devoted 
his time to peddling clams and potatoes between 
New York and Sing Sing. Clams up, and pota- 
toes down, — twice every week, — distance thirty 
miles ; road hilly ; and that was the wagon he 
did it with, — a heavy wagon with a heavy arched 
top, and room for a heavy load, and only shafts 



VI X. 15 

for a single horse. In reply to my question, he 
said he changed horses pretty often, because the 
work broke them down ; but he had a mare now 
that had been at it for three months, and he 
thought she would last some time longer. " She 's 
pretty thin, but you ought to see her trot with 
that wagon." With an air of idle curiosity, I 
asked to see her, — I had gone shabbily dressed, 
not to excite suspicion ; for men of the class I 
had to treat with are usually sharp horse-traders, 
— and this fellow, clam-pedler though he was, 
showed an enthusiastic alacrity in taking me to 
her stall. She had won even his dull heart, and 
he spoke of her gently, as he made the most of 
her good points, and glossed over her wretched 
condition. 

Poor Vixen (that had been her name in her 
better days, and it was to be her name again), 
she had found it hard kicking against the pricks ! 
Clam-carts are stronger than trotting-wagons, and 
even her efforts had been vain. She had suc- 
cumbed to dire necessity, and earned her ignoble 
oats with dogged fidelity. She had a little warm 



16 WHIP AND. SPUE. 

corner in her driver's affections, — as she always 
had in the affections of all who came to know 7 her 
well, — but her lot was a very hard one. Worn 
to a skeleton, w T ith sore galls wherever the har- 
ness had pressed her, her pasterns bruised by 
clumsy shoes, her silky coat burned brown by 
the sun, and her neck curved upward, it would 
have needed more than my knowledge of anat- 
omy to see anything good in her but for her 
wonderful head. This was the perfection of a 
horse's head, — small, bony, and of perfect shape, 
with keen, deer-like eyes, and thin, active ears; 
it told the whole story of her virtues, and 
showed no trace of her sufferings. Her royal 
blood shone out from her face, and kept it 
beautiful. 

My mind was made up, and Vixen must be 
mine at any cost. Still, it w-as important to 
me to buy as cheaply as I could, — and desir- 
able, above all, not to be jockeyed in a horse- 
trade ; so it required some diplomacy (an account 
of which w^ould not be edifying here) to bring 
the transaction to its successful close. The 



vix. 17 

pendulum which swung between offer and de- 
mand finally rested at seventy-five dollars. 

She was brought to me at the Park on a 
bright moonlight evening in June, and we were 
called out to see her. I think she knew that 
her harness days were over, and she danced off 
to her new quarters as gay as a colt in train- 
ing. That night my wakefulness would have 
done credit to a boy of sixteen ; and I was up 
with the dawn, and bound for a ride ; but when 
I examined poor Vix again in her stable, it 
seemed almost cruel to think of using her at 
all for a month. She was so thin, so worn, so 
bruised, that I determined to give her a long 
rest and good care, — only I must try her once, 
just to get a leg over her for five minutes, and 
then she should come back and be cared for 
until really well. It was a weak thing to do, 
and I confess it with all needful humiliation, 
but I mounted her at once ; and, although I 
had been a rider all my days, this was the first 
time I had ever really ridden. For the first 
time in my life I felt as though I had four 



18 WHIP AND SPUR. 

whalebone legs of my own, worked by steel 
muscles in accordance with my will, but with- 
out even a conscious effort of will. 

That that anatomy of a horse should so easily, 
so playfully, handle my heavy weight was a 
mystery, and is a mystery still. She carried 
me in the same high, long-reaching, elastic trot 
that we sometimes see a young horse strike when 
first turned into a field. A low fence was near 
by, and I turned her toward it. She cleared it 
with a bound that sent all my blood thrilling 
through my veins, and trotted on again as though 
nothing had occurred. The five minutes' turn 
was taken with so much ease, with such evident 
delight, that I made it a virtue to indulge her 
w T ith a longer course and a longer stride. We 
went to the far corners of the Park, and tried all 
our paces; all were marvellous for the power so 
easily exerted and the evident power in reserve. 

Yes, Frank Forester was right, blood horses are 
made of finer stuff than others. My intention of 
giving the poor old mare a month's rest was never 
carried out, because each return to her old recrea- 



vi x. 19 

tion — it was never work — made it more evi- 
dent that the simple change in her life was all she 
needed ; and, although in constant use from the 
first, she soon put on the flesh and form of a 
sound horse. Her minor bruises were obliterated, 
and her more grievous ones grew into permanent 
scars, >*— blemishes, but only skin deep ■ for every 
fibre of every muscle, and every tendon and bone 
in her whole body, was as strong and supple as 
spring steel. 

The Park afforded good leaping in those days. 
Some of the fences were still standing around the 
abandoned gardens, and new ditches and old 
brooks were plenty. Vixen gave me lessons in 
fencing which a few years later, in time of graver 
need, stood me in good stead. She weighed less 
than four times the weight that she carried ; yet 
she cleared a four-foot fence with apparent ease, 
and once, in a moment of excitement, she carried 
me over a brook, with a clear leap of twenty-six 
feet, measured from the taking-off to the landing. 

Her feats of endurance were equal to her feats 
of strength. I once rode her from Yorkville to 



20 WHIP AND SPUE. 

Rye (twenty one miles) in an hour and forty-five 
minutes, including a rest of twenty minutes at 
Pelharn Bridge, and I frequently rode twenty-five 
miles out in the morning and back in the after- 
noon. When put to her work, her steady road 
gallop (mostly on the grassy sides) was fifteen 
miles an hour. 

Of course these were extreme cases ; but she 
never showed fatigue from them, and she did 
good service nearly every day, winter and sum- 
mer, from her twelfth to her fifteenth year, keep- 
ing always in good condition, though thin as a 
racer, and looking like a colt at the end of the 
time. Horsemen never guessed her age at more 
than half of what it actually was. 

Beyond the average of even the most intelligent 
horses, she showed some almost human traits. 
Above all was she fond of children, and • would 
quiet down from her wildest moods to allow a 
child to be carried on the pommel. When en- 
gaged in this serious duty, it was difficult to 
excite her, or to urge her .out of a slow and 
measured pace, although usually ready for any 



vix. 21 

extravagance. Not the least marked of her pecu- 
liarities' was her inordinate vanity. On a country- 
road, or among the workmen of the Park, she was 
as staid and business-like as a parson's cob ; but 
let a carriage or a party of visitors come in sight, 
and she would give herself the prancing airs of a 
circus horse, seeming to watch as eagerly for some 
sign of approval, and to be made as happy by it, 
as though she only lived to be admired. Many 
a time have I heard the exclamation, "What a 
beautiful horse ! " and Vix seemed to hear it too, 
and to appreciate it quite as keenly as I did. A 
trip down the Fifth Avenue in the afternoon was 
an immense excitement to her, and she was more 
fatigued by it than by a twenty-mile gallop. 
However slowly she travelled, it was always with 
the high springing action of a fast trot, or with 
that long-stepping, sidelong action that the 
French call a deux pistes; few people allowed 
her to pass without admiring notice. 

Her most satisfactory trait was her fondness 
for her master; she was as good company as a 
dog, — better, perhaps, because she seemed more 



/ 



22 WHIP AND SPUR. 

really a part of one's self; and she was quick 
to respond to my changing moods. I have some- 
times, when unable to sleep, got up in the night 
and saddled for a ride, usually ending in a long 
walk home, with the bridle over my arm, and the 
old mare's kind face close beside my own, in some- 
thing akin to human sympathy; she had a way 
of sighing, when things were especially sad, that 
made her very comforting to have about. So we 
went on for three years, always together, and 
always very much to each other. We had our 
little unhappy episodes, when she was pettish and 
I was harsh, — sometimes her feminine freaks 
were the cause, sometimes my masculine blunder- 
ing, — but we always made it up, and were soon 
good friends again, and, on the whole, we were 
both better for the friendship. I am sure that I 
was, and some of my more grateful recollections 
are connected with this dumb companion. 

The spring of 1861 opened a new life for 
both of us, — a sad and a short one for poor 
Vix. 

I never knew just how much influence she 



Vix 23 

had in getting my commission, but, judging by 
the manner of the other field officers of the regi- 
ment, she was evidently regarded as the better 
half of the new acquisition. The pomp and cir- 
cumstance of glorious war suited her temper 
exactly, and it was ludicrous to see her satisfac- 
tion in first wearing her gorgeous red-bordered 
shabrack ; for a time she carried her head on 
one side to see it. She conceived a new affec- 
tion for me from the moment when she saw me 
bedecked with the dazzling bloom that preceded 
the serious fruitage of the early New York vol- 
unteer organizations. 

At last the thrilling day came, Broadway 
was alive from end to end with flags and white 
cambric and sad faces. Another thousand were 
going to the war. With Swiss bngle-march and 
chanted Marseillaise, we made our solemn way 
through the grave and anxious throng. To us 
it was naturally a day of sore trial ; but with 
brilliant, happy Vixen it was far different ; she 
was leaving no friends behind, was going to meet 
no unknown peril. She was showing her royal, 



24 WHIP AND SPUE. 

stylish beauty to an admiring crowd, and she 
acted as though she took to her own especial 
behoof every cheer that rang from Union Square 
to Cortlandt Street. It was the glorious day of 
her life, and, as we dismounted at the Jersey 
ferry, she was trembling still with the delight- 
ful excitement. 

At Washington we were encamped east of the 
Capitol, and for a month were busy in getting 
settled in the new harness. Mr. Lincoln used 
to drive out sometimes to our evening drill, and 
he always had a pleasant w T ord — as he always 
had for every one, and as every one had for 
her — for my charming thoroughbred, who had 
made herself perfectly at home w T ith the troops, 
and enjoyed every display of the marvellous 
raiment of the regiment. 

On the 4th of July we crossed the Potomac 
and went below Alexandria, where we lay in 
idle preparation for the coming disaster. On 
the lGth we marched, in Blenker's brigade of 
Miles's division, and we passed the night in a 
hay-field, with a confusion of horses' feed and 



VIX. 25 

riders' bed, that brought Vix and me very close- 
ly together. On the 18th we reached the valley 
this side of Centreville, while the skirmish of 
Blackburn's Ford was going on, — a skirmish 
now, but a battle then. For three nights and 
two days we lay in the bushes, waiting for ra- 
tions and orders. On Sunday morning McDow- 
ell's army moved out ; — we all know the rest. 
Miles's thirteen thousand fresh troops lay with- 
in sight and sound of the lost battle-field, — he 
drunk and unable, even if not unwilling, to take 
them to the rescue, — and all we did was, late 
in the evening, to turn back a few troopers of 
the Black Horse Cavalry, the moral effect of 
whose unseen terrors was driving our herds, 
panting, back to the Potomac. Late in the 
night we turned our backs on our idle field, 
and brought up the rear of the sad retreat. 
Our regiment was the last to move out, and 
Vix and I were with the rear-guard. Wet, cold, 
tired, hungry, unpursued, we crept slowly through 
the scattered debris of the broken-up camp equi- 
page, and dismally crossed the Long Bridge in a 
2 



26 WHIP AND SPUR. 

pitiless rain, as Monday's evening was closing 
in. 0, the dreadful days that followed, when a 
dozen resolute men might have taken Washing- 
ton, and have driven the army across the Chesa- 
peake, when everything was filled with gloom 
and rain and grave uncertainty ! 

Again the old mare came to my aid. My regi- 
ment was not a pleasant one to be with, for its 
excellent material did not redeem its very bad 
commander, and I longed for service with the 
cavalry. Fremont was going to St. Louis, and 
his chief of staff was looking for cavalry officers. 
He had long known Vixen, and was kind enough 
to tell me that he wanted her for the new organ- 
ization, and (as I was her necessary appendage), 
he procured my transfer, and we set out for the 
West. It was not especially flattering to me 
to be taken on these grounds ; but it was flatter- 
ing to Vixen, and that was quite as pleasant. 

Arrived at St. Louis, we set about the organ- 
ization of the enthusiastic thousands who rushed 
to serve under Fremont. Whatever there was 
of ostentatious display, Vixen and I took part 



VI X. 27 

in, but this was not much. Once we turned 
out in great state to receive Prince Plon-Plon, 
but that was in the night, and he didn't come 
after all. Once again there was a review of all 
the troops, and that was magnificent. This was 
all. There was no coach and four, nor anything 
else but downright hard work from early morning 
till late bedtime, from Sunday morning till Satur- 
day night. For six weeks, while my regiment of 
German horsemen was fitting up and drilling at 
the Abbey Race-track, I rode a cart-horse, and kept 
the mare in training for the hard work ahead. 

At last we were off, going up the Missouri, 
sticking in its mud, poling over its shoals, and 
being bored generally. At Jefferson City Vixen 
made her last appearance in ladies' society, as by 
the twilight fires of the General's camp she went 
through her graceful paces before Mrs. Fremont 
and her daughter. I pass over the eventful pur- 
suit of Price's army, because the subject of my 
story played only a passive part in it. At Spring- 
field I tried her nerve by jumping her over the 
dead horses on brave Zagonyi's bloody field ; and, 



28 WHIP AND SPUR. 

although distastefully, she did my bidding with- 
out flinching, when she found it mast be done. 
The camp-life at Springfield was full of excite- 
ment and earnestness ; Price, with his army, was 
near at hand (or we believed that he was, which 
was essentially the same). Our work in the cav- 
alry was very active, and Vix had hard service 
on insufficient food, — she seemed to be sustained 
by sheer nervous strength. 

At last the order to advance was given, and we 
were to move out at daybreak; then came a 
countermanding order; and then, late in the 
evening, Fremont's farewell. He had been re- 
lieved. There was genuine and universal grief. 
Good or bad, competent or incompetent, — this 
is not the place to argue that, — he was the life 
and the soul of his army, and it was cruelly 
wronged in his removal. Spiritless and full of 
disappointment, we again turned back from our 
aim; — then would have been Price's opportunity. 

It was the loveliest Indian-summer weather, 
and the wonderful opal atmosphere of the Ozark 
Mountains was redolent with the freshness of a 



VI X. 29 

second spring. As had always been my habit in 
dreamy or unhappy moods, I rode my poor tired 
mare for companionship's sake, — I ought not to 
have done it, — I would give much not to have 
done it, for I never rode her again. The march 
was long, and the noonday sun was oppressive. 
She who had never faltered before grew nervous 
and shaky now, and once, after fording the 
Pomme-de-Terre in deep water, she behaved 
wildly ; but when I talked to her, called her 
a good girl, and combed her silken mane with 
my fingers, she came back to her old way, and 
went on nicely. Still she perspired unnaturally, 
and I felt uneasy about her when I dismounted 
and gave her rein to Rudolf, my orderly. 

Late in the night, when the moon was in 
mid-heaven, he came to my tent, and told me 
that something was the matter with Vixen. My 
adjutant and I hastened out, and there we be- 
held her in the agony of a brain fever. She 
was the most painfully magnificent animal I 
ever saw. Crouched on the ground, with her 
forelegs stretched out and wide apart, she was 



30 WHIP AND SPUR. 

swaying to and fro, with hard and stertorous 
breath, — every vein swollen and throbbing in 
the moonlight. De Grandele, our quiet veter- 
inary surgeon, had been called while it was yet 
time to apply the lancet. As the hot stream 
spurted from her neck she grew easier ; her 
eye recovered its gentleness, and she laid her 
head against my breast with the old sigh, and 
seemed to know and to return all my love for 
her. I sat with her until the first gray of 
dawn, when she had grown quite calm, and 
then I left her with De Grandele and Rudolf 
while I went to my duties. We must march 
at five o'clock, and poor Vixen could not be 
moved. The thought of leaving her was very 
bitter, but I feared it must be done, and I 
asked De Grandele how he could best end her 
sufferings, — or w r as there still some hope 1 He 
shook his head mournfully, like a kind-hearted 
doctor as he was, and said that he feared not ; 
but still, as I was so fond of her, if I would 
leave him six men, he would do his best to 
bring her on, and, if he could not, he would 



VIX. 31 

not leave her alive. I have had ~few harder 
duties than to march that morning. Four days 
after, De Grandele sent a message to me at our 
station near Rolla, that he was coming on nice- 
ly, and Jioped to be in at nightfall. " Vixen 
seems to be better and stronger." At nightfall 
they came, the poor old creature stepping slowly 
and timidly over the rough road, all the old 
fire and force gone out of her, and with only a 
feeble whinny as she saw me walking to meet 
her. We built for her the best quarters we 
could under the mountain-side, and spread her 
a soft bed of leaves. There was now hope that 
she would recover sufficiently to be sent to St. 
Louis to be nursed. 

That night, an infernal brute of a troop horse 
that had already killed Ludlow's charger, led by 
some fiendish spirit, broke into Vixen's enclosure, 
and with one kick laid open her hock joint. 

In vain they told me that she was incurable. 
I could not let her die now, when she was just 
restored to me; and I forced from De Grandele 
the confession that she might be sluug up and 



32 WHIP AND SPUR. 

so bound that the wound would heal, although 
the joint must be stiff. She could never carry 
me again, but she could be my pet ; and I 
would send her home, and make her happy for 
many a long year yet. We moved camp two 
miles, to the edge of the town, and she followed, 
painfully and slowly, the injured limb dragging 
behind her ; I could not give her up. She was 
picketed near my tent, and for some days grew 
no worse. 

Finally, one lovely Sunday morning, I found 
her sitting on her haunches like a dog, patient 
and gentle, and wondering at her pain. She re- 
mained in this position all day, refusing food. I 
stroked her velvet crest, and coaxed her with 
sugar. She rubbed her nose against my arm, 
and was evidently thankful for my caresses, but 
she showed no disposition to rise. The adjutant 
led me into my tent as he would have led me 
from the bedside of a dying friend. I turned to 
look back at poor Vixen, and she gave me a 
little neigh of farewell. 

They told me then, and they told it very ten- 



VIX. 33 

derly, that there was no possibility that she 
could get well in camp, and that they wanted 
me to give her over to them. The adjutant 
sat by me, and talked of the old days when I 
had had her at home, and when he had known 
her well. We brought back all of her pleasant 
ways, and agreed that her trouble ought to be 
ended. 

As we talked, a single shot was fired, and all 
was over. The setting sun was shining through 
the bare November branches, and lay warm in 
my open tent-front. The band, which had been 
brought out for the only funeral ceremony, 
breathed softly Kreutzer's touching " Die Ka- 
pelle," and the sun went down on one of the 
very sad days of my life. 

The next morning I carved deeply in the 
bark of a great oak-tree, at the side of the 
Pacific Railroad, beneath which they had buried 
my lovely mare, a simple VIX ; and some day 
I shall go to scrape the moss from the inscrip- 
tion. 

2* c 



RUBY. 




WAS a colonel commanding a regiment 
of German cavalrymen in South Mis- 
souri, and must have a horse ; it was 
desirable to be conspicuously well mounted, and 
so it must be a showy horse ; being a heavy 
weight and a rough rider, it must be a good 
horse. With less rank, I might have been com- 
pelled to take a very ordinary mount and be 
content : my vanity would not have availed me, 
and my rough riding must have ceased. 

But I was chief ruler of the little world that 
lay encamped on the beautiful banks of the Kou- 
bie d'Eaux ; and probably life was easier to all 
under me when I was satisfied and happy. I am 
not conscious of having been mean and crabbed, 
or of favoring those who favored me to the disad- 



RUBY. 35 



vantage of those who did not. I cannot recall 
an instance of taking a bribe, even in the form 
of a pleasant smile. It was probably easier, in 
the long run, to be fair than to be unfair, and 
therefore the laziest private ever ordered on extra 
duty could not lay his hand on his heart and say 
he thinks it was done because he was not diligent 
in foraging for turkeys and hens for my private 
mess. I had very early in life been impressed 
with the consciousness that the way of the trans- 
gressor is not easy ; and as I wanted my way to 
be easy, I fell into the way of not transgressing. 
This may not have been a very worthy motive 
to actuate the conduct of a military commander ; 
but perhaps it was as good as the average in 
our Department of the Southwest, where, if the 
truth must be told, virtue did not have it all its 
own way, — we were different from troops farther 
east ; and although it made me sometimes wince 
to have my conduct ascribed to a noble upright- 
ness of purpose, and showed that it would really 
have been more honest not to have been quite 
so good, yet one should perhaps be satisfied with 



36 WHIP AND SPUR. 



having carried out one's intention of treating every 
man in the command, officer or soldier, as nearly 
as he should be treated as the interests of the pub- 
lic service, the good of the individual himself, and 
one's own personal convenience would allow. 

Therefore, I say, I am not conscious of having 
favored those who favored me, to the disadvan- 
tage of those who did not ; neither do I think 
that (at this stage of our acquaintance) the Grafs 
and Barons and simple Mister Vons, of whom the 
command was so largely composed, entertained 
the hope of personal benefit when they laid their 
kindnesses, at my accustomed feet, and tried to 
smooth my way of life. 

The headquarters' mess was generally well sup- 
plied, — and no questions asked. My relations 
with most of the command were kindly, and it 
apparently came to be understood — for German 
cavalrymen are not without intelligence — that 
the happiness of the individual members of the 
regiment depended rather on the happiness of 
its colonel than on any direct bids for his favor. 
Be this as it may, I am not conscious of having 



RUBY. 37 



received such direct appeals, and I am entirely- 
conscious of the fullest measure of happiness 
that my circumstances would allow ; not an ec- 
stasy of delight, — far from that, — but a com- 
fortable sense of such well-fed, well-paid, well- 
encamped, and pleasantly occupied virtue as had 
left nothing undone that my subordinates could 
be made' to do, and did nothing that my condi- 
tions rendered difficult. My own good-humor 
was equalled by that of the regiment at large, 
and the beetling sides of the Ozark valleys no- 
where sheltered a happier campful of jolly good 
fellows than the Vierte Missouri Cavalry. 

We lay on the marvellous Roubie d'Eaux, at its 
source ; no such babbling brook as trickles from 
the hillside springs of New England, but a roar- 
ing torrent, breaking at once from a fathomless 
vent in the mountain. The processes of forma- 
tion with these South Missouri rivers are all hid- 
den from sight, but, far away in the topmost 
caves of the Ozark hills, the little streamlets 
trickle, and unite for a larger and ever larger 
flow, gorging at last the huge caverns of the lime- 



38 WHIP AND SPUR. 

stone rock and bursting upon the world a full- 
grown river. Within our camp this wonderful 
spring broke forth, and close at hand was a large 
grist-mill that it drove. We were a self-sustain- 
ing community, — in this, that we foraged our 
own corn and ground our own meal. With simi- 
lar industry we provided ourselves with fish, flesh, 
and fowl. 

The trees were bare with the November frosts, 
but the Indian summer had come, and, day after 
day, it bathed every twig and spray with its am- 
ber breath, warming all nature to a second life, 
and floating the remoter hills far away into a hazy 
dreamland. 

But personally, notwithstanding all this, I was 
not content : I was practically a dismounted cav- 
alryman. Indeed* it would even have been a pity 
to see a colonel of infantry riding such brutes as 
fell to my lot, for good weight-carriers were rare 
in that section. I had paid a very high price for 
a young thoroughbred stallion (afterwards, hap- 
pily, sold for a large advance), only to find him a 
3 r ear too young for his work, and the regiment 



RUBY. 39 



had been scoured in vain for an available mount. 
I would have gone any reasonable length, even in 
injustice, to secure such an animal as was needed. 
It was not easy to make up one's mind to order 
a soldier to give up a horse he was fond of, and 
some soldier had an especial fondness for all but 
the worthless brutes. My reluctance to do this 
was perhaps not lessened by the fact that it w T as 
forbidden for officers to ride United States horses. 
It finally became evident that the chances .were 
very small of ever finding a suitable animal, and 
I even went out, on one shooting . excursion, 
mounted on a mule. 

Up to this time the regiment had been all that 
could be asked, but now it seemed to contain 
a thousand ill-tempered, sore-headed men. The 
whole camp was awry. Some of the officers inti- 
mated that this was all the fault of the adjutant ; 
that the orders from headquarters had lately been 
unusually harsh. This officer, when remonstrated 
with, insisted that he had only transmitted the 
exact orders given him, and I knew that my own 
action had always been reasonable, — on principle 



40 WHIP AND SPUE. 

so. Sometimes one almost wished himself back 
in civil life, away from such constant annoy- 
ances. 

We had in the regiment one Captain Graf von 
Gluckmansklegge, who was in many respects the 
most accomplished and. skilful officer of us all. 
His life had been passed in the profession, and he 
had only left his position of major in a Bavarian 
Uhlan regiment to draw his sabre in defence of 
"die Freiheit," in America, as senior captain of 
the Fourth Missouri Cavalry. He w T as an officer 
of Asboth's selection, and had many of that vet- 
eran's qualities. Tall, thin, of elegant figure, as 
perfect a horseman as good natural advantages 
and good training could make, and near-sighted, 
as a German cavalry officer must be, he was as 
natty a fellow as ever wore an eye-glass and a 
blond mustache. He was, at the same time, a 
man of keen worldly shrewdness and of quick 
judgment, — qualities which, in his case, may 
have been sharpened by long practice at those 
games of chance with which it has not been unu- 
sual for European officers to preface their coming 



RUBY. 41 



to draw their sabres in defence of "die Freiheit" 
in America. 

With Gluckmansklegge I had always been on 
friendly terms. Among the many lessons of his 
life he had learned none more thoroughly than 
the best way- to treat his commanding officer ; 
and there was in his manner an air of friendly 
deference and of cordial submission to rank, 
accompanied by a degree of personal dignity, 
that elevated the colonel rather than lowered 
the captain, — a manner that probably makes 
its way with a newly fledged officer more surely 
than any other form of appeal to his vanity. 
One sometimes saw a brand-new second-lieuten- 
ant made happier than a king by this same 
touch of skill from an old soldier in his com- 
pany, whom he knew to be far his superior in 
all matters of service. To be quite frank, if I 
have an element of snobbishness in my own or- 
ganization, it has been more nurtured into life 
by the military deference of better soldiers than 
myself under my command than by all other 
influences combined ; thus modified do the best 



42 WHIP AND SPUR. 

of us become in the presence of unmerited 
praise. 

One evening Gluckmansklegge came to my tent 
door: "Escoose, Col-o-nel, may I come 1 ?" And 
then, flinging out his eye-glass with a toss of 
the head, he went on, with his imperfect Eng- 
lish, to tell me he had just learned from his 
lieutenant that I could find no horse to suit 
me ; that he had a good one strong enough for 
my weight, and, he thought, even good enough 
for my needs. He had bought him in St. Louis 
from the quartermaster, and would I oblige 
him by trying him 1 He was quite at my ser- 
vice, at the government price, for he, being- 
lighter, could easily replace him. Did I remem- 
ber his horse, — his " Fuchs " 1 " He is good, 
nice, strong horse, an he yoomp ! — yei ! ! " 

I did remember his horse, and I had seen 
him "yoomp." It had long been a subject of 
regret to think that such an animal should be 
in the regiment, yet not on my own picket-line. 
It was well known that great prices had been 
offered for him, only to make Gluckmansklegge 






RUBY. 43 



fling his eye-glass loose, and grin in derision. 
" Fnchs is — how you call 1 — ' heelty,' an ge- 
sund ; wenn yon like, your Ike will go to my 
company to bring him." I did like, and I had 
no scruples against buying him for one hundred 
and twenty-five dollars. Ike, a handsome 'con- 
traband, went early the next morning with a 
halter for the Fuchs, and I was up bright and 
betimes to try him. 

I had only seen the horse before under the 
saddle, perfectly equipped, perfectly bitted, and 
perfectly ridden, an almost ideal charger. There 
was a great firebrand scar on the flat of 
each shoulder, where he had been fired for a 
cough, — so said Gluckmansklegge ; — others in- 
timated that this effaced a U. S. brand ; but, 
except this, not a sign of a blemish. In form, 
action, style, color (chestnut), and training he 
was unexceptionably good, and might well ex- 
cite the envy of all good horsemen who saw him 
under the saddle. Knowing him so well, I went 
rather eagerly to the picket-line to refresh my- 
self with the added sensation that the actual 
ownership of such a horse must give. 



44 WHIP AND SPUR. 

There stood the new purchase, — a picture of 
the most abject misery ; his hind legs drawn 
under him ; the immense muscles of his hips 
lying flabby, like a cart-horse's ; his head hang- 
ing to the level of his knees, and his under-lip 
drooping ; his eyes half shut, and his long ears 
falling out side wise like a sleepy mule's. I had 
bought him for a safe price, and he would prob- 
ably do to carry Ike and the saddle-bags ; but 
I felt as far as ever from a mount for myself, 
and went back to my tent wiser and no hap- 
pier than before. 

Presently Ike appeared with the coifee, and 
asked how I liked the new horse. 

"Not at all." 

"Don't jel well now, I reckon he 's a consid'- 
able of a hoss." 

I sent him to look at him again, and he came 
back with a very thoughtful air, — evidently he 
had been impressed. At last he said, " Well now, 
Colonel, I don't reckon you bought that hoss to 
look at him on the picket-line, did ye % " 

" No, Ike, or he should be sold out very 



RUBY. 45 



cheap ; but he is not the kind of horse I sup- 
posed he was ; he ought to work in a mule- 
team." 

11 Well now, Colonel, mebbe he is ; but you 
can't never tell nothin' about a hoss till you 
get him between ye ; and I reckon he 's a con- 
sid'able of a hoss, T reckon he is." 

Ike was wise, in his way, and his way was a 
very, horsy one, — so my hopes revived a little ; 
and when Gluckmansklegge came up on a capi- 
tal little beast he had been handling (secretly 
to replace the Fuchs), I had the new venture 
saddled and brought round. He came blunder- 
ing along, head and ears and tail down, and 
stood like a leathern horse for me to mount, 
Gluckmansklegge dropping his eye-glass and grin- 
ning. It was as well to find out first as last 
whether he had anything in him or not, and I 
gathered up the curb-rein, which brought his 
head into superb position and settled him well 
back upon his haunches ; but, as the movement 
had been made with dignity, I gave him both 
heels, firmly, — when we went sailing ! — how 



46 WHIP AND SPUR. 

high I don't know, probably not fifteen feet, but 
it seemed that, and covering a good stretch to 
the front. It was the most enormous lift I had 
ever had, and (after an appreciable time in the 
air), when he landed square on all four feet, it 
was to strike a spanking, even trot, the bit play- 
ing loose in his mouth, his head swaying easily 
with his step, and his tail flying. I had never 
been more amazed in my life than by the won- 
derful grace and agility of this splendid brute. 
As he trotted along with his high, strong, and 
perfectly cadenced step, he showed in the swing 
of his head all the satisfaction of an athlete turn- 
ing, conscious, lightly away from the footlights, 
after his especial tour de force. 

As Gluckmansklegge rode up, he said, " Well, 
Col-o-nel, how you like % Nice pretty strong 
horse, what 1 " 

And then, his English failing him, he fell, 
through an attempt at French, into German, in 
which his tongue was far more ready than my 
ear. Still it was easy to gather enough to un- 
derstand some of the processes by which the 



RUBY. 47 



animal's natural qualifications for his work had 
been developed into such unusual accomplish- 
ments ; and then he glided into the compliment- 
ary assertion that no one but the colonel of his 
regiment could ever have hoped to buy him at 
any price, — and of course he did not consider it 
a sale. His original outlay, which he could not 
afford to lose, had been reimbursed ; but the 
true value of the horse, his education, he was 
only too glad to give me. And then, the pleas- 
ure of seeing his colonel suitably mounted, and 
the satisfaction of seeing the horse properly rid- 
den, really threw the obligation on his side. 
Then, with his inimitable naivete, he not only 
expressed, but demonstrated, in every look and 
gesture, more delight in watching our move- 
ments than he had felt in his own riding. 
" Praise a horseman for his horsemanship, and 
he will ride to the Devil." Gluckmansklegge (I 
did not suspect him of a desire for promotion) 
pointed to a strong rail-fence near by, and sug- 
gested that the combination of man and horse 
for that sort of thing was unusual. Whether it 



48 WHIP AND SPUR. 

was a banter or a compliment, it would have 
been impossible for any man who properly es- 
teemed himself and his riding to stop to con- 
sider. Turned toward the fence, the Fuchs, 
checking his speed, seemed to creep toward it, 
as a cat would, making it very uncertain what 
he proposed ; but as he came nearer to it, that 
willingness to leap that an accustomed rider' will 
always recognize communicated itself to me, and, 
with perfect judgment, but with a force and 
spirit I had never hoped to meet in a horse of 
this world, he carried me over the enormous 
height, and landed like a deer, among the stumps 
and brush on the other side, and trotted gayly 
away, athlete-like again, happier and prouder 
than ever horse was before. 

Sitting that evening at my tent door, opposite 
the spring, bragging, as the custom is, over the 
new purchase, it occurred to me that that stream of 
water and that bit of horse-flesh had some quali- 
ties alike ; so I christened the latter " Koubie 
d'Eaux," which was soon translated and short- 
ened to "Ruby," — a name henceforth familiar 
throughout the regiment. 



RUBY. 49 



To become my property was the only thing 
needed to make him perfect, for Ike was born 
in a racing stud in Kentucky, and had practised 
all the arts of the craft, up to the time when, be- 
ing both jockey and " the stakes " in a race he 
rode, he was lost to a Missouri gentleman of for- 
tune, and became a body -servant. He was once 
confidential : — 

" Well, now, Colonel, you see, this is how it 
was: I hadn't nothin' ag'in my master, — he 
was a right nice man ; but then, you see, he 
drinked, and I didn't know what might become 
of me some time. Then, you see, I knowed this 
man was stiddy, an' he 'd jess done bought a 
yallar gal I kinder had a notion for, an' so, — 
don't ye see why] — well, the hoss could have 
won the race fast enough, but then, you see, my 
master, — well, he was a drinkin' kind of a man, 
an' I thought I might as well fix it. I knowed 
I was up for stakes, an' that's how I come to 
Missouri ; I ain't no Missouri man bom, but that 's 
how it was." 

He had become a good body-servant without 
3 D 



50 WHIP AND SPUR. 

forgetting his stable training, and his horses bore 
testimony to his skill and fidelity. After going 
through the routine of a well-regulated stable, 
he gave each horse a half-hour's stroking with 
the flat of his hands, brisk and invigorating ; and 
the result was a more blooming condition and 
more vigorous health than is often seen in horses 
on a campaign. The best substitute that could 
be secured for a stable was a very heavy canvas 
blanket, covering the horse from his ears to his 
tail and down to his knees, water-proof and wind- 
proof. It was a standing entertainment with the 
less dignified members of the mess to invite at- 
tention to Ruby as he stood moping under this 
hideous housing. Certainly I never saw him thus 
without thinking that his time had at last come, 
and that he surely would never again be able to 
carry me creditably. Yet, as Ike's devotion con- 
tinued, he grew better and better, commanding 
daily more of the respect and admiration of all 
who knew him, and attaching himself to me more 
and more as we learned each other's ways. 

One never loves but one horse entirely, and 



RUBY. 51 



so Ruby never quite filled Vixen's place; but 
as a serviceable friend, he was all that could be 
desired. The unsupplied want of my life, that 
had made me restless and discontented, was now 
satisfied, and my duties became easy, and mv 
pastimes (the principal times of South Missouri 
warfare) entirely agreeable. 

It was no slight addition to these sources of 
contentment to feel that the command had at last 
awakened to a sense of its dereliction, 'and was 
fast reforming its ways. I had hardly owned 
Ruby for a fortnight before the old cheerfulness 
and alacrity returned to the regiment, and by the 
time we broke up our camp on the Roubie d'Eaux 
and went over to Lebanon for the shooting sea- 
son, the entire organization was in a most satis- 
factory condition. 

Our life in Lebanon was an episode of the war 
that we shall not soon forget. To the best of my 
knowledge and belief, after Price had retreated 
from Pea Ridge, the only organized forces of armed 
Rebels to be found north of the White River were 
local bands of jay-hawkers, whose rebellion was 



52 WHIP AND SPUR. 

mainly directed against the laws of property, and 
the actuating- motive of whose military movements 
was " nags." The stealing of horses, with the 
consequent application of Lynch law, was all that 
the native male population had to keep them 
out of mischief, for weeks and weeks together. 
There was just enough of this sort of armed 
lawlessness to furnish us with a semblance of 
duty ; not enough seriously to interrupt our more 
regular avocations. 

Lebanon is on the high table-land of the 
Ozarks, in the heart of a country flowing with 
prairie-hens and wild turkeys, and bountifully 
productive of the more humdrum necessaries 
of life. Thanks to the fleeing of Rebel fam- 
ilies, we found comfortable quarters without too 
severely oppressing those who had remained. 
What with moving the court-house away from 
the public square, leaving the space free for a 
parade, and substituting a garrison flag-staff for 
the town pump, we kept our men from rust- 
ing ; and when, after a time, we had established 
a comfortable post-hospital and a commodious 



RUBY. 53 



military prison, Lebanon was as complete and 
well-ordered a station as could be found in South 
Missouri. I had the questionable honor and the 
unquestionable comfort of holding its command 
from the end of January to the end of April, — 
three dreamy months, that seem now to have 
been passed in a shooting-lodge, under favorable 
auspices. 

As a legacy of the "Hundred Days," when 
the " Fourth Missouri " was the "Fremont Hus- 
sars," we had an able-bodied and extremely well- 
selected regimental band, that soothed our over- 
tasked senses when we came in from our work 
in the fields, gathering where our enemies had 
sown, and (under the suspended game-laws of 
the State) shooting grouse and quail in the early 
spring. 

Naturally, most of my official duties were such 
as could be performed by an extremely well-reg- 
ulated adjutant ; and I usually passed his busy 
half-hour (in private) with Ruby. There had 
been an impetuosity about the horse at the out- 
set which it was desirable to quell, and I rode 



54 WHIP AND SPUR. 

him regularly in a nicely fenced kitchen-garden, 
where, after he learned that fences are not always 
intended for leaping-bars, he fell slowly into the 
routine of the training-school, and easily acquired 
a perfect self-command and aplomb that enabled 
him, under all circumstances, to await his rider's 
instructions. 

I wish that less account had been made, in the 
writings of those whose horse-stories have pre- 
ceded mine, of the specified feats of their ani- 
mals. The role of a horse's performances is 
necessarily limited, and it is probably impossible 
for a well-constituted mind to recite the simple 
story of his deeds without seeming to draw 
largely on the imagination. Consequently, an 
unexaggerated account of what Ruby actually 
did (and I cannot bring my mind to an embel- 
lishment of the truth) would hardly interest a 
public whose fancy has been thus pampered and 
spoiled. But for this, these pages could be filled 
with instances of his strength and agility that 
would almost tax belief. Suffice it to say that 
while, like most good high leapers, he would cover 



RUBY. 55 



but a moderate breadth of water, he would get 
over anything reasonable in the shape of a fence 
that could be found about the town. 

I was a heavy weight, — riding nearly two hun- 
dred pounds, — and necessarily rode with judg- 
ment. If there was a low place in a fence, we 
never chose a high one ; but, at the same time, 
if there were no low places, we took the best we 
could find. Ruby seemed to know that the two 
of us were solid enough to break through any 
ordinary pile of rails, and what we could not jump 
over we jumped at. More than once did he carry 
away the top rail of a snake fence with his knees, 
and land fair and square on the other side ; but 
it was a very high leap that made this necessary. 

He would jump on to the porch of the quarter- 
master's office (approached from the ground by 
four steps), and then jump over the hand-rail and 
land on the ground below again, almost wagging 
his tail with delight at the feat. 

His ear was quicker than mine for the peeping 
of quail and for the drumming of grouse, and, 
in the absence of a good dog, there is no doubt 



56 WHIP AND SPUR. 

that my pot (for which alone I have been said to 
hunt) was better filled by reason of his intelli- 
gence in the field, and because he would allow 
one to shoot from the saddle. The birds never 
mistook me for a sportsman until I was quite 
in among them, blazing away. 

In coming home from the prairie, we generally 
rode round by the way of a certain sunken garden 
that stood a couple of feet below the level of the 
road. A five-foot picket-fence that stood at the 
roadside had fallen over toward the garden, so 
that its top was hardly four feet higher than the 
road. This made the most satisfactory leap we 
ever took, — the long, sailing descent, and the 
safe landing on sandy loam, satisfied so com- 
pletely one's prudent love of danger. 

I think I missed this leap more than anything 
at Lebanon when, finally, we set out for Arkansas. 

We made our first considerable halt early in 
May, at Batesville, on the White River, — a lovely, 
rose-grown village, carrying, in the neatly kept 
home of its New England secessionists, evidence 
that they remembered their native land, where, in 



RUBY. 57 



their day, before the age of railroads, the " vil- 
lage " flourished in all its freshness and simplicity. 
It had now acquired the picturesque dilapidation, 
in the manner of fences and gates and defective 
window-panes, that marked the Southern domicile 
during the war. Ruby had strained himself quite 
seriously during the march, and had been left to 
come on slowly with the quartermaster's train. 
This left me quite free for the social life, such 
as it was, to which we — the only available men 
that had been seen there since Price gathered his 
forces at Springfield — were welcomed with a 
reserved cordiality. Our facilities for forming 
a correct opinion of society were not especially 
good, but I fancied I should have passed my time 
to as good advantage in the saddle. 

We soon left for an active expedition in the di- 
rection of Little Rock, of which it is only neces- 
sary to say, here, that it lasted about a month, 
and brought the writer acquainted with some very 
unsatisfactory horses, — a fact which heightened 
his pleasure, on striking the White River bottom 
again, at finding that Ruby had been brought 
3* 



58 WHIP AND SPUR. 

over the ferry to meet him. Tired as I was, I 
took a glorious brisk trot through the Canebrake 
Road, with a couple of leaps over fallen trees, 
that revived the old emotions and made a man 
of me again. 

While we lay at Batesville we were unusu- 
ally active in the matter of drill and reor- 
ganization • and this, with our engagements in 
the town, kept us too busy for much recrea- 
tion ; but Ludlow and I managed to work in a 
daily swim in the White River, with old saddles 
on our horses, and scant clothing on our per- 
sons. Talk of aquatic sports ! there is no royal 
bath without a plucky horse to assist ; and a 
swim across the swift current at Batesville, with 
a horse like Ruby snorting and straining at every 
stroke, belittled even the leaping at Lebanon. 

From Batesville we commenced our memora- 
ble march to join the fleet that had just passed 
Memphis, following down the left bank of the 
river to Augusta, and then striking across the 
cotton country to Helena, — a march on which we 
enjoyed the rarest picturesqueness of plantation 



RUBY. 59 

life, and suffered enough from heat and hunger 
and thirst, and stifling, golden dust to more 
than pay for it. 

Helena was a pestiferous swamp, worth more 
than an active campaign to our enemies, filling 
our hospitals, and furrowing the levee bank with 
graves. It was too hot for much drilling, and 
we kept our better horses in order by daybreak 
races. With the local fever feeling its way into 
my veins, I was too listless to care much for 
any diversion ; but Ike came to me one evening 
to say that he " reckoned " Ruby was as good 
a horse as anybody had in the " camps," and 
he might as well take a hand in the games. I 
told him I had no objection to his being run, 
if he could find a suitable boy, but that both 
he and I were too heavy for race-riding. 

" I don't weigh only about a hundred and a 
half," said the ambitious man. 

"Well, suppose you don't, that is ten pounds 
too much." 

" I reckon a man can ride ten pound lighter 
'n he is if he knows how to ride ; anyhow, if 



60 WHIP AND SPUR. 

Rube can't skin anything around here, I don't 
know nothin' about horses." 

"Ike, did you ever run that horse V 

"Well, Colonel, now you ask me, I did jest 
give Dwight's darkey a little brush once." 

Conquering my. indignation and my scruples, 
I went over, just for the honor of the establish- 
ment, and made up a race for the next day. 

I have seen crack race-horses in my time, but 
I never saw more artistic riding nor more capi- 
tal running than that summer morning on the 
River Road at Helena, just as the sun began to 
gild the muddy Mississippi. The satisfaction of 
this conquest, and the activity with which new 
engagements were offered by ambitious lieuten- 
ants, who little knew the stuff my man and 
horse were made of, kept off my fever for some 
weeks ; but I steadily declined all opportunity 
of racing with horses outside of our command, 
for I had been reared in a school of Puritan 
severity, and had never quite overcome my con- 
victions against the public turf. A corporal of 
an " Injeanny regement" took occasion to crow 



RUBY. 61 



lustily — so I heard — because " one of them 
French coveys " was afraid to run him a quar- 
ter for five dollars. It appeared that a cleanly 
European was always supposed by this gentry 
to be French ; and in the army at large I was 
better known by the company I kept than by 
my New England characteristics. 

Naturally, Ike thought that, while Ruby was 
engaged in this more legitimate occupation, he 
ought not to be ridden for mere pleasure ; and it 
was only when a visitor was to be entertained, 
or when I went out on plea of duty, that I 
could steal an opportunity to leap him ; but he 
took one fence that fairly did him credit. It 
was a snake fence measuring four feet and two 
inches, with a deep ditch on each side cut close 
to the projecting angles of the rails. Ruby car- 
ried me over the first ditch into the angle be- 
tween the rails, then over the fence into the 
narrow space on the other side, and then over 
the second ditch into the field. It was the most 
perfect combination of skill, strength, and judg- 
ment that was possible to horse-flesh ; and I think 



62 WHIP AND SPUR. 

Gluckmansklegge, who was with me and had sug- 
gested the venture, despaired of ever getting his 
promotion by any fair means, when we rejoined 
him by the return leap and rode safely to camp. 

Unhappily, even entire satisfaction with one's 
horse is powerless to ward off such malaria as 
that of the camp at Helena, and in due time 
I fell ill with the fever. The horse was turned 
over to the care of the quartermaster, and Ike 
and I came wearily home on sick-leave. 

Late in the autumn we returned to St. Louis, 
where one of the German officers told me that 
the regiment had joined Davidson's army at " Pi- 
lot K-nopp " ; and after the Hun, our new ad- 
jutant, arrived from the East, we set out for 
headquarters, and took command of the cavalry 
brigade of Davidson's army. 

From November until January we were tossed 
about from post to post, wearing out our horses, 
wearying our men, and accomplishing absolutely 
nothing of value beyond the destruction of an 
enormous amount of the rough forage, which 
wculd otherwise have been used to feed " nags," 



RUBY. 63 



— stolen or to be stolen, — and would have thus 
tended to foster the prevailing vice of the region. 

At last we settled down in a pleasant camp at 
Thomasville, — a good twelve miles away from 
Davidson, — and were at rest ; it was only those 
near him who suffered from his fitful caprices, 
and he was now encamped with the infantry. 

Pleasant as we found it with our little duty 
and much sport, I can never look back to Thom- 
asville without sorrow. To say that I had ac- 
quired a tenderness for Ruby would not be 
strictly just; but I felt for him all the respect 
and admiration and fondness that is possible short 
of love. Vix had been my heroine, and my only 
one ; but Ruby was my hero, and I depended on 
him for my duty and my pleasure more than I 
knew. With his full measure of intelligence he 
had learned exactly his role, and he was always 
eager, whenever occasion offered, to show the world 
what a remarkably fine horse I had, — being him- 
self conscious, not only of his unusual virtues, 
but, no less, of the praise they elicited. 

One sunny Southern day, toward the end of 



64 WHIP AND SPUR. 

January, Davidsoo had ridden over, with his fol- 
lowing, to dine with us ; and as we were sitting 
before our mess-tent, mellow with after-dinner 
talk of our guns and our dogs and our horses, 
the General was good enough to remember that 
he had seen me riding a chestnut that he thought 
much too finely bred for field work : had I been 
able to keep him 1 Then Ruby was discussed, 
and all his successes were recalled, first by one 
friend and then by another, until Davidson needed 
ocular proof of our truthfulness. 

Ike had taken the hint, and brought Ruby 
round in due time, — glistening like gold in the 
slanting rays of the setting sun, but blundering 
along with his head down and ears drooping in 
his old, dismal way. 

"0 no, I don't mean that horse," said David- 
son ; "I mean a very high-strung horse I have 
seen you ride on the march." 

" Very well, General, that is the animal ; he 
keeps his strings loose when he is not at his 
work." 

" No, I have seen you riding a far better horse 



RUBY. 65 



than that; I am too old a cavalryman to be 
caught by such chaff." 

To the great glee of the Hun, whose faith in 
Ruby was unbounded, Davidson's whole staff 
turned the laugh on me for trying to deceive 
the General just because he had been dining. 

I mounted, and started off with one of Ruby's 
enormous lifts, that brought the whole company 
to their feet. It was the supreme moment with 
him. Full of consciousness, as though he knew 
the opportunity would never come again, and 
quivering in anticipation of his triumph, he was 
yet true to his training, and held himself subject 
to my least impulse. 

We had lain in our camp for more than a week, 
and there was not a vestige left of the recently 
substantial fences, — only the suggestive and con- 
spicuous gateways that stood to mark the march 
of our armies from the Chesapeake to the Indian 
Nation. But Ruby built fences in his imagina- 
tion higher than any he had ever faced, and 
cleared them without a scratch, landing close as 
though the Helena ditch were still to be taken. 



66 WHIP AND SPUR. 

It would take long to tell all he did and how 
perfectly he did it ; he went back at last to his 
canvas blanket, loaded with adulation, and as 
happy as it is given a horse to be. 

In his leaping he had started a shoe, and Ike 
took him in the morning to the smith (who had 
taken possession of an actual forge), to have it 
reset. A moment later, the Hun cried, " My 
God, Colonel, look at Ruby ! " 

Hobbling along with one hind foot drawn up 
with pain, he was making his last mournful 
march, and we laid him that day to rest, — as true 
a friend and as faithful a fellow as ever wore a 
chestnut coat. 

He had reared in the shop, parted his halter, 
and fallen under a bench, breaking his thigh far 
up above the stifle. 



WETTSTEIN. 




T is a pleasant thing to be a colonel of 
cavalry in active field-service. There 
are circumstances of authority and re- 
sponsibility that fan the latent spark of barbarism 
which, however dull, glows in all our breasts, and 
which generations of republican civilization have 
been powerless to quench. We may not have con- 
fessed it even to ourselves ; but on looking back 
to the years of the war, we must recognize many 
things that patted our vanity greatly on the back, 
— things so different from all the dull routine of 
equality and fraternity of home, that those four 
years seem to belong to a dream-land, over which 
the haze of the life before them and of the life 
after them draws a misty veil. Equality and Fra- 
ternity ! a pretty sentiment, yes, and full of sen- 



68 WHIP AND SPUR. 

sible and kindly regard for all mankind, and full 
of hope for the men who are to come after us ; 
but Superiority and Fraternity ! who shall tell all 
the secret emotions this implies 1 To be the head 
of the brotherhood, with the unremitted clank 
of a guard's empty scabbard trailing before one's 
tent-door day and night ; with the standard of the 
regiment proclaiming the house of chief author- 
ity ; with the respectful salute of all passers, and 
the natural obedience of all members of the com- 
mand ; with the shade of deference that even 
comrades show to superior rank ; and with that 
just sufficient check upon coarseness during the 
jovial bouts of the headquarters' mess, making 
them not less genial, but void of all offence, — 
living in this atmosphere, one almost feels the 
breath of feudal days coming modified through 
the long tempestuous ages to touch his cheek, 
whispering to him that the savage instinct of the 
sires has not been,, and never will be, quite civil- 
ized out of the sons. And then the thousand 
men, and the yearly million that they cost, while 
they fill the cup of the colonel's responsibility 



WETTSTEIN. 69 



(sometimes to overflowing), and give him many- 
heavy trials, — they are his own men ; their use- 
fulness is almost of his own creation, and their 
renown is his highest glory. 

I may not depict the feelings of others ; but 
I find in the recollection of my own service — as 
succeeding years dull its details and cast the 
nimbus of distance about it — the source of emo- 
tions which differ widely from those to which our 
modern life has schooled us. 

One of the colonel's constant attendants is the 
chief bugler, or, as he is called in hussar Dutch, 
the " Stabstrompaytr " ; mine was the prince of 
Trompaytrs, and his name was Wettstein. He 
was a Swiss, whose native language was a mixture 
of guttural French and mincing German. Eng- 
lish was an impossible field to him. He had 
learned to say " yes " and " matches " ; but not 
one other of our words could he ever lay his 
tongue to, except the universal "damn." But 
for his bugle and his little gray mare, I should 
never have had occasion to know his worth. Mu- 
sic filled every pore of his Alpine soul, and his 



70 WHIP AND SPUR. 

wonderful Swiss "Retreat " must ring to this day 
in the memory of every man of the regiment 
whose thoughts turn again to the romantic cam- 
paign of South Missouri. What with other bu- 
glers was a matter of routine training was with 
him an inspiration. All knew well enough the 
meaning of the commands that the company 
trumpets stammered or blared forth ; but when 
they rang from Wettstein's horn, they carried 
with them a vim and energy that secured their 
prompt execution ; and his note in the wild Ozark 
Hills would mark the headquarters of the " Vierte 
Missouri " for miles around. From a hill-top, half 
a mile in advance of the marching command, I 
have turned the regiment into its camping-ground 
and dismounted it in perfect order by the melo- 
dious telegraphy of Wettstein's brazen lips alone. 
That other chief attribute of his, Klitschka, 
his little beast, stayed longer with me than his 
bugle did, and is hardly less identified with the 
varied reminiscences of my army life. I bought 
her, as a prize, with the original mount of the 
regiment, in Fremont's time, and was mildly 



WETTSTEIN. 71 



informed by that officer that I must be careful 
how I accepted many such animals from the con- 
tractor, though a few for the smaller men might 
answer. Asboth, Fremont's chief of staff, with 
a scornful rolling up of his cataract of a mus- 
tache, and a shrug of his broad, thin shoulders, 
said, " Why for you buy such horses 1 What your 
bugler ride, it is not a horse, it is a cat." His 
remark was not intended as a question, and it 
ended the conversation. Months after that, he 
eagerly begged for the nine-lived Klitschka for 
one of his orderlies; being refused him, she re- 
mained good to the end. She was an animal that 
defied every rule by which casual observers test 
the merit of a horse ; but analytically considered 
she was nearly perfect. Better legs, a better 
body, and a better head, it is rare to see, than 
she had. But she lacked the arched neck and 
the proud step that she needed all the more 
because of her small size. By no means showy 
in figure or in action, it took a second look to 
see her perfect fitness for her work. Her color 
was iron-gray, and no iron could be tougher than 



72 WHIP AND SPUR. 

she was ; while her full, prominent eye and ample 
brain-room, and her quick paper-thin ear, told of 
courage and intelligence that made her invaluable 
throughout four years of hard and often danger- 
ous service. Like many other ill-favored little 
people, she was very lovable, and Wettstein loved 
her like a woman. He would never hesitate to 
relax those strict rules of conduct by which Ger- 
man cavalrymen are supposed to govern them- 
selves, if it was a question of stealing forage for 
Klitschka ; and he was (amiable fellow !) never 
so happy as when, from a scanty supply in the 
country, he had taken enough oat-sheaves to bed 
her in and almost cover her up, while other 
horses of the command must go hungry; and 
was never so shaken in his regard for me as 
when I made him give up all but double rations 
for her. 

Double rations she often earned, for Wettstein 
was a heavy youth, with a constitutional passion 
for baggage out of all proportion to his means 
of transportation. Mounted for the march, he 
was an odd sight. Little Klitschka's back, with 



WETTSTEIN. 73 



his immense rolls of blankets and clothing before 
and behind, looked like a dromedary's. Planted 
between the humps, straight as a gun-barrel, the 
brightest of bugles suspended across his back by 
its tasselled yellow braid, slashed like a harlequin 
over the breast, his arms chevroned with gorgeous 
gold, — Wettstein, with his cap-front turned up 
so as to let the sun fall full on his frank blue eyes 
and his resolute blond mustache, was the very 
picture of a cavalry bugler in active campaign. 

Smoking, gabbling, singing, rollicking, from 
morning until night, and still on until morning 
again if need be, he never lost spirit nor temper. 
He seemed to absorb sunshine enough during the 
day to keep every one bright around him all night. 
When at last his bugle had been stilled forever, 
we long missed the cheer of his indomitable gay- 
ety j wearying service became more irksome than 
while his bubbling mirth had tempered its dul- 
ness ; and even little Klitschka, although she 
remained an example of steady pluck, had never 
so potent an influence as while he had put his 
ow T n unfailing mettle into her heels. After she 
4 



74 WHIP AND SPUE. 

was bequeathed to me, she was always most 
useful, but never so gay and frisky as while she 
carried her own devoted groom. No day was too 
long for her and no road too heavy ; her brisk 
trot knew no failing, but she refused ever again 
to form the personal attachment that had sealed 
her and Wettstein to each other. 

The two of them together, like the fabled Cen- 
taur, made the complete creature. He with the 
hardened frame aud bright nature of his Alpine 
race, and she with her veins full of the mustang 
blood of the Rocky Mountains, were fitted to each 
other as almost never were horse and rider before. 
Their performances were astonishing. In addi- 
tion to a constant attendance on his commander 
(who, riding without baggage, and of no heavier 
person than Wettstein himself, sometimes fagged 
out three good horses between one morning 
and the next), the Trompaytr yet volunteered 
for all sorts of extra service, — carried messages 
over miles of bad road to the general's camp, 
gave riding-lessons and music-lessons to the com- 
pany buglers, and then — fear of the guard-house 



WETTSTEIN. 75 



and fear of capture always unheeded — he never 
missed an opportunity for the most hazardous and 
most laborious foraging. 

He was a thorough soldier, — always "for duty," 
always cleanly, always handsome and cheery, and 
heedlessly brave. If detected in a fault (and he 
was, as I have hinted, an incorrigible forager), he 
took his punishment like a man, and stole milk 
for himself or fodder for Klitschka at the next 
convenient (or inconvenient) opportunity, with an 
imperturbability that no punishment could reach. 

Once, when supplies were short, he sent me, 
frofn the guard-house where he had been confined 
for getting them, a dozen bundles of corn-blades 
for my horses; not as a bribe, but because he 
would not allow the incidents of discipline to dis- 
turb our friendly relations ; and in the matter of 
fodder in scarce times he held me as a helpless 
pensioner, dependent on his bounty. When in 
arrest by my order, his."Pon chour, Herr Ober- 
ist," was as cordial and happy as when he strolled 
free past my tent. Altogether, I never saw his 
like before or since. The good fortune to get 



76 WHIP AND SPUR. 

such a bugle, such a soldier, and such a mount 
combined, comes but once in the lifetime of the 
luckiest officer. It was only his uncouth tongue 
that kept him from being pilfered from me by 
every general who had the power to " detail " 
him to his own headquarters. 

So universal, by the way, was this petty vice 
of commanding officers, that one was never safe 
until he adopted the plan, in selecting a staff 
officer, of securing his promise to resign from the 
service, point-blank, if ordered to other duty, and 
more than one offended general has been made 
indignant by this policy. With Wettstein, I ?elt 
perfectly easy, for the average capacity of briga- 
dier-generals stopped far short of the analysis of 
his dual jargon. Several tried him for a day, 
but they found that his comprehension was no 
better than his speech, and that his manifest 
ability was a sealed book to them. He always 
came home by nightfall with a chuckle, and " Le 
general versteht mich nicht. Je blase ' marrrsch ' 
fur < halt.' " 

So it was that, for a couple of years, this 



WETTSTEIN. 77 



trusty fellow trotted at my heels through rain 
and shine, by day and by night, with his face full 
of glee, and his well-filled canteen at the service 
of our little staff. Mud and mire, ditches and 
fences, were all one to him and Klitschka ; and 
in Vix's day they followed her lead over many a 
spot that the others had to take by flank move- 
ment. 

Our work in Missouri was but little more than 
the work of subsistence. We were a part of an 
army too large for any Rebel force in that re- 
gion to attack, and too unwieldy to pursue gue- 
rillas with much effect. But now and then we 
made a little scout that varied our otherwise 
dull lives; and at such times Wettstein always 
attached himself to the most dangerous patrol- 
ling party, and Klitschka was usually the first 
to bring back news of the trifling encounters. 

At last, in February, 1863, when we had lain 
for a month in delicious idleness in the heart of 
a rich country, literally flowing with poultry and 
corn-fodder, I, being then in command of a divis- 
ion of cavalry, received an order from Davidson 



WHIP AND SPUR. 



to select six hundred of the best-mounted of my 
men, and to attack Marmaduke, who was recruit- 
ing, ninety miles away, at Batesville on the White 
River in Arkansas. His main body, three thou- 
sand five hundred strong, lay in the " Oil-Trough 
Bottom," on the other side of the river. A bri- 
gade of Western infantry was to march as far as 
Salem (thirty miles), and to support us if neces- 
sary ; though we afterward found that at the 
only moment when we might have had grave 
occasion to depend on them, they were, with an 
inconsistency that was not the least attribute of 
our commanding officer, withdrawn without notice 
to us. 

We were to go in light marching order, car- 
rying only the necessary clothing, and rations 
of salt and coffee. Wettstein's ideas of lightness 
differing from mine, I had to use some authority 
to rid poor Klitschka of saucepans, extra boots, 
and such trash ; and after all, the rascal had, 
under the plea of a cold, requiring extra blankets, 
smuggled a neatly sewn sausage of corn, weigh- 
ing some fifteen pounds, into one of his rolls. 



WETTSTE1N. 79 






Eager men, too, whose horses were out of trim, 
had to be discarded, and the whole detail to be 
thoroughly overhauled. But the jovial anticipa- 
tion of seeing Batesville once more — a New 
England village planted on a charming hillside 
in Arkansas, where we had sojourned with Cur- 
tis the summer before, and where we all had the 
pleasant acquaintance that even an enemy makes 
in a town from which the native men have long 
been gone, and only the women remain — made 
the work of preparation go smoothly, and long 
before dawn Wettstein's bugle summoned the de- 
tails from the several camps. There was a ring- 
ing joyousness in his call, that spoke of the cosey, 
roaring fire of a certain Batesville kitchen to 
which his bright face and his well-filled haver- 
sack had long ago made him welcome, and pro- 
spective feasting gave an added trill to his blast. 
The little detachments trotted gayly into line, 
officers were assigned for special duty, temporary 
divisions were told off, and a working organiza- 
tion was soon completed. Before the sun was 
up, such a Ra, t't'ta, t't'ta, t't'ta ! as South 



80 WHIP AND SPUR. 

Missouri had never heard before, broke the line 
by twos from the right, and we were off for a 
promising trip. Marmaduke we knew of old, and 
personal cowardice would have deterred no one 
from joining our party, for he could be reached 
from our stronger army only by a complete sur- 
prise ; and in a country where every woman and 
child (white, I mean) was his friend and our ene- 
my, a surprise, over ninety miles of bad roads, 
seemed out of the question. Indeed, before we 
had made a half of the distance, one of his flying 
scouts told a negro woman by the roadside, as 
he checked his run to water his horse, " There 's 
a hell's-mint o' Yanks a comin' over the moun- 
tain, and I must git to Marmyjuke " ; and to 
Marmaduke he " got," half a day ahead of us, 
only to be laughed at for a coward who had been 
frightened by a foraging-party. 

The second night brought us to Evening Shade, 
a little village where one Captain Smith was rais- 
ing a company. They had all gone, hours ahead 
of us, but had left their supplies and their fires 
behind them, and these, with the aid of a grist- 



WETT8TEIN. 81 



mill (for which an Illinois regiment furnished a 
miller), gave us a . bountiful supper. At day- 
break we set out for our last day's march, still 
supposing that Marmaduke's men would put the 
river between themselves and us before night, 
but confident of comfortable quarters at Bates- 
ville. A few miles out, we began to pick up 
Rebel stragglers, and Wettstein soon came rat- 
tling through the woods, from a house to which 
he had been allowed to go for milk, with the 
story of a sick officer lodged there. Following 
his lead with a surgeon and a small escort, I 
found the captain of the Evening Shade company 
lying in a raging fever, with which he had found 
it impossible to ride, and nearly dead with terror 
lest we should hang him at once. His really 
beautiful young wife, who had gone to enliven 
his recruiting labors, was in tears over his im- 
pending fate. While we were talking with him 
concerning his parole, she bribed Wettstein with 
a royal pair of Mexican spurs to save his life, 
evidently thinking from his display of finery that 
he was a major-general at the very least. The 
4* f 



82 WHIP AND SPUR. 

kind fellow buckled the spurs on my heels, and 
they evidently gave me new consequence in his 
eyes as we rode on our way. 

Presently we struck a party of about twenty- 
five, under a Captain Mosby, who had been mak- 
ing a circuit after conscripts and had had no 
news of us. After a running fight, during which 
there occurred some casualties on the other side, 
we captured the survivors of the party and sent 
them to the rear. 

From midday on, we heard rumors of a sally- 
in strong force from Batesville, and were com- 
pelled to move cautiously, — straggling parties of 
Rebel scouts serving to give credibility to the 
story. At sunset we were within six miles of 
the town ; and, halting in the deep snow of a 
large farm-yard, I sent a picked party of thirty, 
under Rosa, to secure the ferry, if possible, — 
Wettstein and Klitschka accompanying to bring 
back word of the result. After two anxious 
hours, he came into camp with a note from 
Rosa : " Marmaduke is over the river and has 
the ferry-boat with him ; three of his men killed. 



WETTSTEIN. 83 



Wettstein did bravely." The poor fellow had a 
bad cut on his arm and was in pain, but not a 
moment would he give himself until brave little 
Klitschka, smothered in bright straw, was filling 
herself from the smuggled bag of corn. Then 
he came to the surgeon and had his wounded 
arm duly dressed. Although evidently suffering 
and weak from loss of blood, he gave us a cheer- 
ing account of Rosa's fight, and dwelt fondly on 
the supper he had bespoken for us at good Mrs. 

■ 's house, where we had quartered in the 

summer. At nine o'clock, after Klitschka had 
fed and the patrols had come in, we set out on 
our march. It was still snowing hard, and even 
the dead men that marked Rosa's recent ride 
were fast being shrouded in purest white. One 
of them Wettstein pointed out as the man with 
whom he had crossed sabres, and he asked per- 
mission to stay with the party detailed to bury 
him, for he had been a " bratf homme." With 
his tender sympathy for friend or foe, he was 
a truer mourner than a dead soldier often gets 
from the ranks of his enemy. Even this sad 



84 WHIP AND SPUR. 

ride came to an end, as all things must, and at 
the edge of the town soldierly Rosa stood, to 
report that the pickets were posted and our 
quarters ready. Giving him a fresh detail to re- 
lieve his pickets, and asking his company at our 
midnight supper, w T e pushed on to our chosen 
house. Here we found all in order, save that 
the young lady of the family had so hastily put 
on the jacket bearing the U. S. buttons of her 
last summer's conquests, that she failed quite to 
conceal the C. S. buttons on a prettier one un- 
der it. She and her mother scolded us for driv- 
ing the Rebel beaux from town, when there was 
to have been a grand farewell ball only the next 
night ; but they seemed in no wise impressed 
with regret for the friends who had been killed 
and wounded in the chase. It turned out that 
Marmaduke had grown tired of reports that we 
were marching on him in force, and would not 
believe it now until his own men rode into town 
at nightfall with the marks of Rosa's sabres on 
their heads. The place had been filled with 
the officers of his command, and he with them, 



WETTSTE1N. 85 



come for their parting flirtations before the ball. 
They were to march to Little Rock, and their 
men were nearly all collected in the " Bottom," 
over the river. On this sudden proof of the 
attack, they made a stampede for the flat-boat 
of the rope-ferry, and nearly sunk it by over- 
crowding, the hindmost men cutting the rope 
and swimming their horses across the wintry tor- 
rent. 

We had full possession of the town, and were 
little disturbed by the dropping shots from the 
Rebel side. We visited on our unfaithful friends 
such punishment as enforced hospitality could 
compass, and, on the whole, we had n't a bad 
"time." The morning after our arrival we lev- 
ied such contributions of supplies as were ne- 
cessary for our return march, and, in order that 
the return might not look like a retreat, we 
loaded two wagons with hogsheads of sugar 
(which would be welcome in Davidson's commis- 
sariat), and made every arrangement for the es- 
tablishment of the camping of the whole army in 
the country back of the town ; for our force was 



86 WHIP AND SPUR. 

so small that, with, our tired horses, it would 
have been imprudent to turn our backs to Mar- 
maduke's little army, if he supposed us to be 
alone. 

Keeping the town well picketed and making 
much show of laying out an encampment, we 
started the teams and the main body of the 
command at nightfall, holding back a hundred 
men for a cover until a later hour. 

During the evening the Eebels on the south 
side of the river became suspiciously quiet, and 
there was, apparently, some new movement on 
foot. The only possible chance for an attack w T as 
by Magnus's ferry, ten miles below, where the 
boat was so small and the river so wide that 
not more than twenty horses could be crossed in 
an hour, and our sharpshooters were sufficient 
to prevent the removal of the Batesville boat 
to that point. Still it was important to know 
what was going on, and especially important to 
prevent even a scouting-party of the enemy from 
harassing the rear of our tired column by the 
shorter road from Magnus's to Evening Shade ; 



WETTSTEIN. 87 



and I started at nine o'clock (when the moon 
rose), with twenty men, to go round that way, 
directing the remainder of the rear-guard to fol- 
low the main body at midnight. 

The ride to Magnus's was without other ad- 
venture than bad roads and almost impassable 
bayous always entail, and in a few hours we 
reached the plantation, where I had a former 
ally in an old negro who had done us good ser- 
vice during Curtis' s campaign. He said that the 
Rebels had left the Bottom, and were going to 
Little Rock, but, as a precaution he took a 
canoe and crossed over to the house of another 
negro- on the south bank, and returned with a 
confirmation of his opinion. As it was very im- 
portant to know whether the " only enemy of 
Davidson's army had really withdrawn from his 
front, and, as this might be definitely learned 
through the assistance of an old scout who lived 
in the edge of the Bottom, it seemed best to 
cross the river to give him instructions for his 
work. 

I took Ruby, my best horse. He was a sure 



WHIP AND SPUR. 



reliance under all circumstances, and he and I 
knew each other perfectly.' We were at home in 
every foot-path in the country, having had many 
a summer's swim in this very river ; and now, 
accompanied only by Wettstein and Klitschka, 
I went on to the ferry-boat. It was what is 
known as a " swing " ferry. A stout rope is 
stretched between trees on the opposite shores, 
and the boat is attached to a couple of pulleys 
arranged to traverse the length of this rope. 
The attaching cords — one at each end of the 
up-stream side of the boat — are long enough to 
allow it to swing some rods down the stream; 
by shortening one of the ropes and lengthening 
the other, the boat is placed at an angle with 
the swift current, which propels it toward one 
shore or the other, the pulleys keeping pace in 
their course on the main rope. 

The main rope was rough from long use, and 
often the pulleys would halt in their course, 
until the pull of the advancing boat dragged them 
free. Then - the rickety craft, shivering from end 
to end, would make a rapid shoot, until another 



WETTSTEIN. 



defective place in the rope brought her to again. 
At each vibration, the horses nearly lost their 
feet, and the surging stream almost sent its 
muddy water over the gunwale. It was a long 
and anxious trip, — the rotten guy-rope hardly 
serving to hold us to our course. At last we 
reached the shore and rode on to Craikill's house 
in the Bottom. He had been " conscripted," and 
forced to go with the army, so his wife told 
us, and she had seen him march with the rest 
on the Fairview Road for Little Rock. The last 
bird had flown, and we could safely march back 
at our leisure. 

Wettstein filled his pipe, emptied his haver- 
sack for the benefit of Craikill's hungry children, 
and, cheery as ever, followed me to the ferry. 
On the way over he had been as still as a mouse, 
for he was too old a soldier to give an enemy any 
sign of our approach. But, as we set out on the 
return trip, in ' the cold moonlight, he sang the 
" Ranz des Vaches," fondled his little mare, and, 
unmindful of his wounded arm, gave way to the 
flow of spirits that the past few days' duty had 



90 WHIP AND SPUR. 

checked. I never knew him more gay and de- 
lightful ; and, as we stood leaning on our sad- 
dles and chatting together, I congratulated myself 
upon the possession of such a perpetual sunbeam. 
We were .barely half-way across, when, sud- 
denly, coming out of the darkness, riding half 
hidden in the boiling, whirling tide, a huge float- 
ing tree struck the boat with a thud that parted 
the rotten guy-rope, and carried us floating down 
the stream. For a moment there seemed no dan- 
ger, but a branch of the tree had caught the 
corner of the boat, and the pulleys had become 
entangled in the rope. When this had been 
drawn to its full length, and the tree felt the 
strain, the boat dipped to the current, filled, and 
sank under our feet. I called to Wettstein to 
take Klitschka by the tail, but it was too late ; 
he had grasped the saddle with the desperation 
of a drowning man, and made her fairly help- 
less. The boat soon passed from under us, and, 
relieved of our weight, came to the surface at 
our side ; but, bringing the rope against poor 
Wettstein's wounded arm, it tore loose his hold, 



WETTSTE1N. 91 



and soon went down again in the eddy, and 
Klitschka was free. 

"Adieu, Herr Oberist; tenez Klitschka pour 
vous ! Adieu ! " And that happy, honest face 
sank almost within reach of me. The weight of 
his arms prevented his rising again, and only an 
angry eddy, glistening in the moonlight, marked 
his turbid grave. 

Ruby, snorting, and struggling hard with the 
current, pulled me safely to the shore, and little 
Klitschka followed as well as her loaded saddle 
would permit. For the moment, with my own 
life and the lives of two tried companions to 
care for, I thought of nothing else ; but as I sat 
drying at Magnus's roaring hearth the direst deso- 
lation overwhelmed me. Very far from home, — 
far even from the home-like surroundings of my 
own camp, — I had clung to this devoted fellow 
as a part of myself. He was a proven friend ; 
with him I never lacked the sympathy that, in 
the army at least, is born of constant compan- 
ionship, and he filled a place in my life that 
dearer friends at home might not find. He 



92 WHIP AND SPUR. 

was the one comrade whose heart, I was sure, 
was filled only with unquestioning love for me. 
Henceforth I must look for support to compan- 
ions who saw me as I was, who knew my faults 
and my weaknesses, and whose kind regard was 
tempered with criticism. The one love that was 
blind, that took me for better or for worse, had 
been, in an instant, torn from my life, and I 
was more sad than I can tell. 

But Duty knows no sentiment. A saddened 
party, we mounted, to join the main command; 
and, as we rode on through the rest of that deso- 
late night, no word passed to tell the gloom that 
each man felt. 

The petty distinctions of earthly rank were 
swallowed up in a feeling of true brotherhood, 
and Wettstein — promoted now — rode at our 
head as a worthy leader, showing the way to a 
faithful performance of all duty, and a kindly 
and cheerful bearing of all life's burdens ; and, 
through the long and trying campaigns that fol- 
lowed, more than one of us was the better sol- 
dier for the lesson his soldierly life had taught. 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX, 




NION CITY was not a city at all; it 
was hardly a village, and "Disunion" 
would have been its fairer designation. 
It lay in the woods at the crossing of two rail- 
roads, one pointing toward Mobile and one toward 
Memphis, but neither leading anywhere. There 
was a tradition that trains had once been run 
upon each, but many bridges had had to be re- 
built to make the short line to Columbus passa- 
ble, and the rest was ruin; for Forrest had been 
there with his cavalry. 

The land was just so much raised above the 
broad swamp of Northwestern Tennessee that 
whiskey with men to drink it, and a Methodist 
Church South with people to attend it, were pos- 
sible. With these meagre facilities for life, and 



94 WHIP AND SPUE. 

the vague inducement of a railroad-crossing, 
Union City had struggled into an amphibious 
subsistence ; but it had never thriven, and its 
corner-lots had but feebly responded to - the hopes 
of its projectors. 

For many a mile around, the forests and 
swamps were wellnigh impenetrable, and the oc- 
casional clearings were but desolate oases in the 
waste of marsh and fallen timber. The roads 
were wood-trails leading nowhere in particular, 
and all marked a region of the most scanty and 
unfulfilled promise. 

General Asboth, seeing (by the map) that it 
commanded two lines of railroad, sent us to oc- 
cupy this strategic point, and we gradually accu- 
mulated to the number of twenty-five hundred 
cavalry and four thousand infantry, drawing our 
regular supplies from Columbus ; and occupying 
our time with a happy round of drills, inspec- 
tions, horse-races, cock-fights, and poker. It was 
not an elevating existence, but it was charm- 
ingly idle, and w r e passed the serene and lovely 
autumn of 1863 in a military dreamland, where 



' CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 95 

nothing ever came to disturb our quiet, or to 
mar our repose with the realities of war. We 
built ourselves houses, we shot game for our 
tables, we made egg-nog for our evenings, and 
we were happy. The charm of camp-life — with 
just enough of occupation and responsibility, and 
with enough improvement in the troops for a re- 
ward — made even this wilderness enjoyable. I 
had the advantage of seniority and command, and 
the physical comforts that naturally gravitate to- 
ward a commanding officer did not fail me. 

My house, built with the mouse-colored logs 
of a Rebel block-house, covered with the roof of 
the post-office, and floored and ceiled with the 
smoke-mellowed lining of the Methodist church, 
was broad and low and snug. Its windows, also 
taken from the sanctuary in question, were set 
on their sides, and gave to each of the two rooms 
wide, low-browed outlooks into the woods and 
over the drill-ground, that would have made 
worse quarters agreeable. The bricks of an aban- 
doned domestic fireside built a spacious fireplace 
across an angle of each of the rooms, and the clay 



96 WHIP AND SPUR. 

of the locality plastered all our chinks "to keep 
the wind away." I have seen more pretentious 
houses and more costly, but never one in which 
three chosen spirits — I had, in a happy moment, 
selected Voisin and the Hun for my staff — got 
more that is worth the getting out of the sim- 
ple and virtuous life of a cavalry headquarters. 
We were at peace with all the world (Forrest 
was in Mississippi), our pay was regular, our 
rations were ample, — and Asboth had been 
ordered to Pensacola. 

Old A. J., his successor, — every inch a sol- 
dier, and a good fellow to the very core, — used 
sometimes to roll up his camp mattress and run 
down from Columbus for an inspection. Those 
are marked days in our memories. He was a 
lynx in the field, and wry buttoning roused him 
to articulate wrath; but he unbuckled his sabre 
at the door, and brought only geniality within, — 
a mellow geniality that warmed to the influences 
of our modest hosj)itality, and lasted far into 
the night; and then, when the simple and in- 
offensive game was over, and its scores were set- 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 97 

tied, the dear old boy — usually with a smile of 
conquest wandering through his gray beard — 
would unroll his bundle before the fire and sleep 
like a baby until reveille. Happy, happy days, 
— and still happier nights ! 

Naturally, in such a life as we led at Union 
City, our horses formed a very important ele- 
ment in our occupation and in our amusements. 
Soon after our arrival at Columbus, — an event 
which had taken place a few months before, — 
a spanking mare that I had bought to replace 
Ruby had gone hopelessly lame, and it became 
again important to all who were concerned in 
my peace of mind, that a satisfactory substitute 
should be found for her. I had still in my stable 
a little thoroughbred (Guy), who, though excel- 
lent in all respects, was a trifle under my weight, 
and not at all up to the rough riding that was 
a necessary part of our army life. He could go 
anywhere, could jump any practicable barrier, 
was fleet and sound, and in all respects admira- 
ble, but he was made for a lighter weight than 
mine, and, except for show and parade riding, 
5 g 



98 WHIP AND SPUR. 

must mainly be used to carry Ike and the sad- 
dle-bags, or to mount a friend when a friend 
favored me. 

In a second search, in which most of the offi- 
cers of the regiment took a lively interest, there 
was found, in Frank Moore's Battalion of the 
Second Illinois Cavalry, a tall, gaunt, lean, hag- 
gard, thoroughbred-looking beast, which had been 
captured from Merryweather's men in Western 
Tennessee. He was not a handsome horse, nor 
was he to the ordinary eye in any respect 
promising; but a trial showed that he had that 
peculiar whalebone character, and wiry, nervous 
action, which come only with blood, and without 
which no horse is really fit for the saddle. The 
chances were very much against him. He did 
not possess the first element of beauty, save in 
a clean-cut head, a prominent eye, a quick ear, 
a thin neck, sloping shoulders, high withers, and 
the brilliant activity that no abuse had been 
able to conquer. He was held in abeyance un- 
til a careful examination of the two thousand 
horses at the post showed that, even as he 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 99 

stood, he had no equal there for my purposes. 
Since he had come into the army he had been 
in the possession of a private soldier, who had 
done much scouting duty, and he had been ini- 
tiated (successfully) into the scrub-racing which 
Illinois soldiers much affected. The serious 
amount of one hundred and forty dollars was 
hazarded in the venture, and he was transferred 
to our stable. That increment of value which 
always follows the purchase of a new horse 
came rapidly in his case, and it needed only a 
few gallops on the breezy bluffs beybnd Fort 
Halleck, to install him as prime favorite among 
the headquarters' mess. 

He was deemed worthy of the noble name of 
Max, and under Ike's careful grooming he re- 
turned daily toward the blooming condition that 
only Second Illinois abuse had been able to sub- 
due. In an early race with the Hun we were 
ingloriously beaten ; but the Hun rode a mar- 
vellous little blood mare, blooming with hun- 
dreds of bushels of oats, and with two years of 
careful handling. Max, though beaten, was not 



100 WHIP AND SPUR.. 

discouraged, and seemed to say that with time 
and good treatment he would be ready for a 
more successful trial. 

During his period of tutelage, and while he 
was kept from all excessive exertion, he was in- 
ducted into the mysteries of the art, to him 
quite new, of jumping timber. Columbus had 
been occupied by Rebel and Union soldiers since 
the outbreak of the war, and its fences, far and 
wide, had all disappeared ; but nowhere in the 
world was there a greater variety nor a more 
ample stock of fallen trees, whose huge boles 
made capital leaping-bars ; and over these, al- 
most daily, for some months, beginning with the 
smaller ones and going gradually to the largest 
we could find, Max learned to carry a heavy 
weight with a power and precision that even 
Ruby could not have excelled. 

During all this time, ample feed, good shelter, 
regular exercise, and a couple of hours of Ike's 
hand-rubbing daily, worked an uninterrupted im- 
provement in limb and wind and sinews and coat, 
until, by the time we were ordered to Union 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 101 

City, Max had become the pride of the camp. 
He was over sixteen hands high, of a solid dark 
bay color, glistening like polished mahogany, and 
active and spirited as a horse in training for the 
Derby. 

At Union City the headquarters' horses were 
stabled under a capital shed, close at hand, and 
all that master's eye and servant's labor could 
accomplish for their care and improvement was 
lavished upon them ; so. that, during our long 
months' stay, we were among the best-mounted 
men in the Western army. Our pleasure-riding 
and our work lay through swampy wood-roads, 
over obstructions of every sort, and across the 
occasional grass farms, with their neglected rail- 
fences. The weather w T as almost uninterruptedly 
fine, our few visiting neighbors were miles away 
from us, the shooting was good, and the enjoy- 
ment we got from our vagabond life in camp was 
well supplemented by the royal rides we almost 
daily took. 

Naturally, in a camp full of idle men given 
largely to sport, the elevating entertainment of 



102 WHIP AND SPUR. 

horse-racing played a prominent part. Both Max 
and Guy were conspicuous by their successes until, 
long before the close of our leisurely career, but 
only after they had hung my walls with spurs 
and whips and other trophies of their successful 
competition with all comers, both were ruled out 
by the impossible odds they were obliged to give. 
The actual military service required was only 
enough to convince me that Max was a beast of 
endless bottom and endurance, and that, accidents 
apart, he would need no help in any work he 
might be called on to perform. For the rest of 
the war, with much duty of untold severity, I 
habitually rode no other horse for light work or 
for hard, for long rides or for short ones, on the 
march or on parade ; and with all my sentiment 
for his charming predecessors, I had to confess 
that his equal as a campaigner had never come 
under my leg. He would walk like a cart-horse 
at the head of a marching column, would step 
like a lord in passing in review, would prance 
down the main street of a town as though vain 
of all applause, would leap any fence or ditch 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 103 

or fallen timber to which he might be put, would 
fly as though shot from a gun in passing along 
the line ; and when, whether early or late, he 
was taken to his stable, would eat like a hungry 
colt and sleep like a tired plough-horse. In all 
weathers and under all circumstances he was 
steady, honest, intelligent, and ready for every 
duty. I had ridden before, at home and in the 
army, horses ideally good ; I have ridden since, 
over the hunting country of Warwickshire and 
Northamptonshire, horses that were counted of 
the best, but never, before or since, have I 
mounted such a magnificent piece of perfectly 
trained and perfectly capable horse-flesh. 

On one occasion, at Union City, word was 
brought in that a flag of truce from Faulkner 
had arrived at our picket line, and I rode out 
for a parley over a trifling matter of an ex- 
change of prisoners. The officer in charge of 
the flag,, with the company escorting him, had 
originally come from our neighborhood and had 
belonged to Merry weather's " band." As Max 
trotted up to their bivouac, he was greeted with 



104 WHIP AND SPUR. 

cries of recognition, and a lieutenant of the com 
pany was kind enough to warn me that I had 
shown them a stronger inducement than they 
had hitherto had to make an attack on our po- 
sition; for, since Frank Moore had captured the 
horse I rode, they had determined to regain him 
at any risk. Happily, this laudable w T ish was 
never fulfilled, and Max remained, in spite of 
the devices they may have laid for his recapture. 

During the five months of our stay at this 
post, we made some hard scouts in a hard coun- 
try, and we held a good part of West Ten- 
nessee under strict surveillance, but the most 
memorable feature of all our scouting was gen- 
erally the welcome dismounting under the wide 
eaves of our own house ; not, I hope, that we had 
grown effeminate, but a week's tramp through 
the woods of West Tennessee offers little that 
memory can cherish, and prepares one for a sen- 
sation on the near approach of comfort. 

But five months of such life is enough, and I 
was not sorry when the order came that I must 
go for a soldier again. 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 105 

Sherman was about to advance eastward from 
Vicksburg, destroy the lines of railroad by which 
Forrest received supplies from the fertile prairie 
region of Northern Mississippi, and strike the Re- 
bellion in the pit of its stomach. A. J. was to 
take all my infantry down the river, and the 
cavalry was to move to Colliersville, on the line 
of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and 
join a considerable cavalry force gathering' there 
under Sooy Smith and Grierson ; thence we were 
to move southeasterly through Mississippi, to en- 
gage Forrest's forces and to meet Sherman's army 
at the crossing of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad at 
Meridian. 

We lay in camp more than a week, ready to 
move, but awaiting orders. The country (a very 
wet one) was frozen hard and covered with snow. 
Our order to march and the thaw came together, 
on the 2 2d of January. We were to cross the 
Obion River (and bottom) at Sharp's Ferry, twenty- 
three miles southwest of our camp. The com- 
mand consisted of the Fourth Missouri (with a 
battery), Second New Jersey, Seventh Indiana, 



106 WHIP AND SPUR. 

Nineteenth Penns} T lvania, and Frank Moore's Bat- 
talion of the Second Illinois , in all about twenty- 
five hundred well-mounted men present for duty. 
The roads were deep with mud and slush, and 
every creek was " out of its banks " with the 
thaw. We reached the ferry only at nightfall of 
the 23d, over roads that had hourly grown deeper 
and more difficult. Two regiments had crossed, 
through floating ice (eight horses at a trip), by 
a rope-ferry, and at nine o'clock in the evening, 
under a full moon and a summer temperature, 
I crossed with staff and escort. The river was 
already so swollen that we landed in two feet of 
water, and still it was rising. 

Our camp was fixed five miles aw T ay on the 
upland. The first mile was only w T et and nasty, 
and the trail not hard to follow. Then we came 
to' the " back slough," thirty feet wide, four feet 
deep, and still covered with four inches of ice. 
Those who had gone before had broken a track 
through this, and swept the fragments of ice for- 
ward until near the shore they were packed in 
for a w T idth of ten feet or more, and to the full 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 107 

depth of the water. I can make no stronger 
statement than that we all got through safely, 
only wet to the skin. How it was done I do 
not pretend to know. Some went in one way 
and some in another. All I can assert is that 
my stalwart old Max, when he found himself 
standing, belly deep, in broken ice, settled quiet- 
ly on his haunches and took my two hundred 
pounds with one spring on to dry land four feet 
higher than his starting-point, and twelve feet 
away, — but then, Max always was a marvel. 
Guy, who carried Ike, scrambled over the top of 
the broken ice as only he or a cat could do. The 
others fared variously. All were drenched, and 
some were hurt, but all got to the shore at last. 
Then came the hour-long tug to get my ambu- 
lance through with its store of tent-hold gods, 
and we started for our remaining four miles. 
The trail, even of cavalry, is not easily followed 
by moonlight when covered with half a foot of 
water, and we lost our way ; reaching camp, after 
fourteen miles of hard travel, at four o'clock in 
the morning. 



108 WHIP AND SPUR. 

The river was still rising rapidly, and word 
was brought that Karge, with more than half 
the brigade, would have to make a detour of 
fifty miles and cross the Three Forks of the 
Obion far to the eastward, joining us some days 
later, near Jackson. So we idled on, marching 
a few miles each day, camping early, cooking the 
fat of the land for our evening meal, cultivating 
the questionable friendship of the Rebel popula- 
tion by forced contributions of subsistence, and 
leading, on the whole, a peaceful, unlaborious, 
and charming picnic life. Finally, taking Karge 
again under our wing, we pushed on, resolutely 
and rapidly, over flooded swamps, across deep, 
rapid rivers, and through hostile towns, to our 
rendezvous; whence, under the command of two 
generals, and as part of an army of eight thou- 
sand well -mounted cavalry and light artillery, 
and all in light marching order, we started for 
our more serious work. 

The chief in command was a young and hand- 
some, but slightly nervous individual, who es- 
chewed the vanities of uniform, and had about 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 109 

himself and his horse no evidence of his mili- 
tary character that could not be unbuckled and 
dropped with his sword-belt in case of impend- 
ing capture. He was vacillating in his orders, 
and a little anxious in his demeanor, but he had 
shown himself cool and clear-headed under fire, 
and seemed resolutely bent on the destruction of 
the last vestige of Forrest's troublesome army. 
It would be tedious to tell all the adventures of 
our forward expedition ; how we marched in three 
columns over different roads, each for himself, 
and with only a vague notion where and how 
we should meet, and how we should support 
each other. As it afterward proved, the details 
of the order of march had been given to the com- 
■ manders of the other brigades, while I had been 
forgotten ; so that the whole advance w T as vexed 
with crojs-purposes and with the evidences of a 
hidden misunderstanding. The contretemjjs that 
thus came about were annoying, and, in one 
instance, came near being serious : as we were 
going into camp at Prairie Station, my advance 
reported having come in sight of the camp-fires 



110 WHIP AND SPUR. 

of the enemy; a skirmish-line was sent forward, 
and only on the eve of engaging did they dis- 
cover that we were approaching Hepburn's Bri- 
gade, of oar column, which had reached the same 
point by another road. 

The first days of our march in Mississippi 
were through Tippah County, as rough, hope- 
less, God-forsaken a country as was ever seen 
outside of Southern Missouri. Its hills were 
steep, its mud was deep, its houses and farms 
were poor, its facilities for the^subsistence of a 
protecting army like ours were of the most mea- 
gre description, and its streams delayed us long 
with their torrents of bottomless muddy water, 
fast swelling from the thaw that had unlocked 
the snow of all the deep-buried hills and mo- 
rasses of their upper waters. We built ferry- 
boats and swamped them, built bridges and broke 
them, and slowly and painfully, horse by horse, 
transferred the command across the nasty river- 
beds. Tippah Creek detained us and kept us 
hard at work all day and all night, and we 
reached the Tallahatchee at New Albany barely 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. \\\ 

in time to ford our last man across before it rose 
to an impassable depth. And then for two days 
we pressed forward, in company with the whole 
column, through the rough, rocky, and wooded 
country, reaching Okolona only at nightfall. 

Here we struck the marvellous prairie region 
of Northeastern Mississippi, literally a land flow- 
ing with milk and honey. An interminable, fer- 
tile, rolling prairie lay before us in every direc- 
tion. The stern rule of -.the Confederacy had 
compelled the planters to offset every small field 
of cotton with a wide area of corn, until the 
region had become known as the granary of the 
Southern army. Not only must every land- 
owner devote his broadest fields to the cultiva- 
tion of the much-needed cereal, but one tenth of 
all his crop must be stacked for public use in 
cribs at the side of the railroad. 

It was an important incident of our mission 
to destroy everything which directly or indirectly 
could afford subsistence to the Rebel forces; and 
during the two days following our arrival at 
Okolona, while we marched as far south as West 



112 WHIP AND SPUR. 

Point, the sky was red with the flames of burn- 
ing corn and cotton. On a single plantation, 
our flanking party burned thirty-seven hundred 
bushels of tithe corn, which was cribbed near 
the railroad ; no sooner was its light seen at the 
plantation houses than hundreds of negroes, who 
swarmed from their quarters to join our column, 
fired the rail-built cribs in which the remaining 
nine-tenths of the crop was stored. Driven wild 
with the infection, they set the torch to man- 
sion house, stables, cotton-gin, and quarters, un- 
til the whole village-like settlement was blazing 
in an unchecked conflagration./ To see such 
wealth, and the accumulated/ products of such 
vast labor, swept from the? face of the earth, 
gave to the aspect of war a saddening reality, 
which was in strong contrast to the peaceful 
and harmless life our brigade had thus far led. 
In all this prairie region there is no waste land, 
and the evidences of wealth and fertility lay 
before us in all directions. As we marched, the 
negroes came en masse from every plantation to 
join our column, leaving only fire and absolute 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 113 

destruction behind them. It was estimated that 
during these two days' march two thousand 
slaves and one thousand mules w^ere added to 
our train. 

The incidents of all this desolation were often 
sickening and heart-rending; delicate women and 
children, whom the morning had found in peace 
and plenty, and glowing with pride in the valor 
of . Southern arms and the certainty of an early 
independence for their beloved half-country, found 
themselves, before nightfall, homeless, penniless, 
and alone, in the midst of a desolate land. 

Captain Frank Moore, the Cossack of our 
brigade, went at night to an outlying plantation, 
of which the showy mansion-house stood on a 
gentle acclivity in the edge of a fine grove. 
Here lived alone with an only daughter, a beau- 
tiful girl, a man who had been conspicuous in 
his aid to the Rebellion, and whose arrest had 
been ordered. The squadron drew up in front 
of the house and summoned its owner to come 
forth. He came, armed, sullen, stolid, and de- 
termined, but obviously unnerved by the force 



114 WHIP AND SPUR. 

confronting him. Behind him followed his 
daughter, dressed in white, and with her long 
light hair falling over her shoulders. The sight 
of the hated "Yanks" crazed her with rage, 
and before her father could reply to the ques- 
tion with which he had been accosted, she 
called to him wildly, "Don't speak to the vil- 
lains ! Shoot ! shoot them down, shoot them 
down ! " wringing her hands, and screaming with 
rage. The excitement was too much for his 
judgment, and he fired wildly on the troops. 
He was riddled through and through with bul- 
lets; and as Moore turned aw T ay, he left that 
fine house blazing in the black night, and light- 
ing up the figure of the crazy girl as she wan- 
dered, desolate and beautiful, to and fro before 
her burning home, unheeded by the negroes 
who ran with their hastily made bundles to join 
the band of their deliverers. Moore's descrip- 
tion of this scene in the simple language that 
it was his unpretending way to use, gave the 
most vivid picture we had seen of the unmiti- 
gated horror and badness of war. 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 115 

As an instrument of destruction in the ene- 
my's country, our raid had thus far been more 
successful than we could have anticipated ; but 
we had come for even more serious business 
than this, and there were already indications 
that its main purpose would be a failure. Our 
commander had evidently no stomach for a close 
approach to the enemy, and his injunctions at 
Colliersville that we were to try always to " Fight 
at close quarters ! " " Go at them as soon as 
possible with A the sabre ! " and other valorous 
ejaculations/ were in singular contrast to the 
impressions he evinced as the prospect' of an 
actual engagement drew near. 

Forrest was in our front with about our own 
number of cavalry, but without artillery, of 
which we had twenty good pieces. The open 
country offered good fighting ground, and gave 
to our better drilled and more completely or- 
ganized forces a decided advantage, even with- 
out our great odds in artillery. There lay before 
us a fair opportunity for dispersing the most 
successful body of cavalry in the Rebel service; 



116 WHIP AND SPUE. 



and, could we effect a junction with Sherman, 
we should enable him to divide the Confederacy 
from Yicksburg to Atlanta. One of the most 
brilliant and damaging campaigns of the war 
seemed ready to open. Its key ky in our suc- 
cessful engagement, on a fair field, with an infe- 
rior force. Yet all of us who were in a position 
to know the spirit with which we were com- 
manded were conscious of a gradual oozing out 
at the finger-ends of the determination to make 
a successful fight ; and it was a sad night for us 
all when, at West Point, with our skirmish-line 
steadily engaging the Rebel outposts, an order 
came that we were to fall back before daybreak 
toward Okolona. 

The brigade commanders and their staffs had 
had severe duty in the scattered work of destruc- 
tion, and even Max, tough though he was, had 
been almost overworked with constant galloping 
to and fro, and with the frequent countermarch- 
ing our varying orders had required. Still he was 
better than his comrades, and many a man was 
anxious for his mount, should our retreat be 
pressed. 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 117 

Early in the morning we were on our way 
toward the rear, — about eight thousand caval- 
ry, ten sections of artillery, two thousand pack- 
mules, and an unnumbered cloud of fugitive slaves 
mounted on their masters' mules, often two or 
three on each, and clustering under our shadow 
as their only means of escape to the happy land 
of freedom. In an organized advance, all of this 
vast hanging on could be kept at the rear and 
in good order; but on a retreat the instinct of 
self-preservation always attacks first the non-com- 
batant element, and during all the days that fol- 
lowed, we found our way constantly blocked with 
these throngs of panic-stricken people. 

No sooner had we turned tail than Forrest saw 
his time had come, and he pressed us sorely all 
day and until nightfall, and tried hard to gain 
our flanks. A hundred times we might have 
turned and given him successful battle, but, at 
every suggestion of this, we received from our 
general, who was well in advance of the retiring 
column, the order to push forward and give our 
rear a free road for retreat. Midnight found us 



118 WHIP AND SPUR. 

again in the vicinity of Okolona, and the next 
daybreak showed the enemy's long colnmn filing 
out of the woods and stretching well on toward 
our right flank. 

Even the plains of Texas could offer no field 
better suited for a cavalry engagement, and it 
was with satisfaction that we received, at five 
o'clock in the morning, an order to prepare at 
once for a fight ; but our men were barely 
mounted and in line when an order came to 
turn our backs upon this open field, and to re- 
treat with all expedition toward Memphis. 

When we left Okolona we left hope behind, for 
our road struck at once into a wooded, hilly coun- 
try, full of by-ways and cross-roads known to the 
enemy and unknown to us, and we well knew that 
this movement would double Forrest's power and 
divide our own. Then, for a long day, tired and 
hungry from the hard work and ooustant move- 
ment we had just gone through, and with our 
horses half-fed and overworked, we pushed on, 
our rear often attacked and sometimes broken, 
our mule-train and negroes thrown into frequent 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 119 

confusion, one of our brigades demoralized and 
put to flight, and the enemy still pressing our 
rear and reaching for our flanks. At last, to- 
wards night, it became evident that a stand 
must be made or all would be entirely lost, and 
at Ivy Farm, near Pontotoc, we found a broad, 
open hilltop, with large fields, high fences, and 
stout log-houses, which offered an opportunity. 
By this time the command was too widely sep- 
arated, and some of it too much disorganized, 
for the concentration of even a whole brigade, 
but a part of Hepburn's and a part of my own 
were disentangled from the corral of fugitives 
and brought into line. Both of our generals 
were upon the field, and to our surprise both 
seemed brave and resolute ; and this not with 
the resolution of despair, for the actual imme- 
diate necessity of fighting often steadies nerves 
which are easily shaken by the anticipation of 
danger. Brave they were, but not always of the 
same mind, and conflicting orders continued to 
add to our embarrassment and insecurity. 

It is not worth while to detail all the incidents 



120 WHIP AND SPUR. 

of the opening of the short engagement ; it was 
ended by the only legitimate cavalry charge made 
by the " Vierte Missouri" during the whole of its 
four years' history. 

We had withdrawn from the line where we had 
been fighting on foot, had mounted, formed, and 
drawn sabre; the road about one hundred yards 
in front of us was swarming with Rebels, who 
crept along the fence-lines and in the edge of 
the bordering woods, and kept up a steady rain 
of fire well over our heads, where we heard that 
pfwit — pfwit — pfwit of flying bullets which, 
happily, has no relative in the whole chorus of 
sounds, and which is heard above all the din of 
battle, and is felt through every remotest nerve. 

At the command "Forward," excitement ran 
down the line, and there was a disposition for an 
immediate rush. But "Steady — right dress — 
trot ! " in a measured tone, taken up in turn by 
the company officers, brought back all the effect 
of our three years' discipline of" the drill-ground. 
Later, " Steady — gallop — right dress ! " accel- 
erated the speed without disturbing the align- 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 121 

ment, and then, at last, " Charge ! " and with a 
universal yelling and brandishing of sabres we 
went forward like the wind. I then felt how 
mad a venture we had undertaken, for before 
us was the enemy, it is true, but the enemy be- 
hind a high and stout, staked and ridered rail- 
fence. As we drew very near this, still under 
heavy fire, which now at the short range was 
telling, the command became conscious that the 
six-foot fence would withstand our shock, and it 
wavered. I turned to my bugler to sound the 
recall, when I saw him out of the corner of my 
eye, his white horse rearing literally to his full 
height and falling backward with a crash that 
must have killed the poor boy at once. The 
recall was not needed : the regiment had turned 
and was running. The officers, being the best 
mounted and generally the lightest weights, soon 
reached the front, and "Steady — right dress — 
trot ! Steady — right dress — trot ! " was re- 
peated along the line, until the drill-ground 
precision was regained, and then "By fours — 
right about — wheel!" and we stood facing the 
6 



122 WHIP AND SPUR. 

enemy again, ready for another advance. Max 
had been struck by a grazing bullet and had 
been plunging heavily, bat the wound was not 
serious and he was soon quieted. We now saw 
that our charge, futile though it seemed, had 
done its work. The advance of the enemy was 
checked; the sight of troops that could retire 
and re-form for a new attack seemed to have a 
stunning effect upon them. Practically the en- 
gagement was ended. 

Subsequently, one of Forrest's staff officers told 
the Hun that the size of the division which had 
charged was variously estimated at from five to 
ten thousand, but that he had been accustomed 
to such things and knew that we were not more 
than two thousand. In fact, we were less than 
six hundred. Forrest's report of the battle of 
Pontotoc states that the engagement was ended 
"by a cavalry charge of the enemy, which was 
repulsed." 

There was still some sharp scrimmaging, and 
we- had to make two or three more squadron 
and compauy charges to drive away small at- 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX 123 

tacks upon our retreating guns; but the battle, 
as a battle, was over, and Forrest's whole advance 
had been stopped and ended by six hundred 
Fourth Missouri Dutchmen, galloping, yelling, 
and swinging their sabres at several thousand 
men well secured behind a rail-fence. I had 
before, in drill-ground charges, seen old soldiers 
and experienced officers jump down and run away 
from a fence on which they were sitting to watch 
the advance of charging cavalry which they knew 
must wheel before coming within five rods of 
them; but I had never supposed that hot- 
blooded soldiers, in the full excitement of a suc- 
cessful attack, could be unnerved and turned by 
the roar and thundering oncoming of a regiment 
that could by no possibility reach them. Our 
first setting out had driven back a thin skir- 
mish-line which had to cross the fence under 
high speed ; this, doubtless, aided in the debacle ; 
the charge had stunned them, but it was the rally 
that stopped the pursuit. 

The rest of our march was without interesting 
incident all the way to Memphis, but it was 



124 WHIP AND SPUR. 

almost incessant, day and night; without inci- 
dent, that is, that it is worth while to tell here, 
hut our days and nights upon the road were filled 
with annoyance and disgust, and with a store of 
unhappy and ludicrous memories that will last 
the lifetime of all who knew them. 

One day, at New Albany, Max and I were feed- 
ing and sleeping in the door of an old mill while 
the command was slowly crossing the antiquated 
bridge over the Tallahatchie, when I was awak- 
ened by Grierson's riding up in great alarm, call- 
ing upon me "for God's sake" to use the ford 
as well as the bridge, for Hepburn was being cut 
to pieces in the rear, and I must give him the 
full road for his retreat. I had always been a 
respectful subordinate, but none of us were then 
in the best temper ; I did not believe a word of 
it, and I frankly told him so. Even old Max 
pricked up his ears and snorted as if in derision. 
Almost as we were talking, there came an aid 
from Hepburn saying that he had found a good 
supply of forage and would be glad to go into 
camp for the night. But there was no camp to 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 125 

be thought of for that tired crew ; the bogey of 
incessant pursuit loomed up portentously close 
upon our rear-guard, and sent its shadow deep 
into the bowels of our commander, who was miles 
away in the advance, and who would allow us 
only the fewest possible hours in the very dead 
of night for hasty cooking and scant repose. We 
were a worn and weary lot as we finally went into 
camp at the rear of the town ; worn and weary, 
sadly demoralized, and almost dismounted. I 
had lost fifteen hundred good horses, and my 
men, who had been eager and ready for a suc- 
cessful campaign, were broken in spirit and sadly 
weakened in discipline. 

All who had been compelled to bear the brunt 
of the hard work now needed for themselves arid 
their horses absolute rest for days; but being 
called into the city the morning after our arrival, 
my eyes were greeted with the spectacle of Gen- 
eral Sooy Smith, no longer ill, and with no trace 
of shame or annoyance on his face. He had shed 
his modest and prudent attire, and shone out with 
all the brass radiance of a full-fledged major-gen- 



126 WHIP AND SPUE. 

eral. from this time until the Fourth Missouri 
cavalry was mustered out of service, our head- 
quarters were in the immediate neighborhood of 
Memphis, and our life was much more active than 
it had been at Union City. 

Not very much is to be said for Max during 
this time, except in connection with the Sturgis 
expedition, beyond the fact that we lay long in 
the immediate vicinity of the race-course, which 
we repaired and used faithfully, and, so far as he 
was concerned, with eminent success. The more 
frequent necessity for duty, the great labor of 
remounting, reorganizing, and redrilling the com- 
mand, united with the greater publicity of our po- 
sition to lay some restraint on our mode of life, 
and to make our conduct more circumspect. Still 
we were not miserable, and the neighborhood of 
a large town has, to a well-regulated headquarters' 
mess, its compensations as well as its drawbacks. 

Sturgis's expedition to Guntown and back — 
especially back — has passed into history, and 
its unwritten memories will always remain with 
those who took part in it. 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 127 

Guntown is far away in Northeastern Missis- 
sippi. It is not laid down on the map of the 
country, but it lies just across the Tishamingo 
Creek, and it consists mainly of two plantation 
houses and a school-house. Our stay there was 
not long, and we were too much occupied to 
study the locality minutely, but it is my im- 
pression that the most important incident in its 
history was connected with our visit. 

We were a force of about nine thousand in- 
fantry, cavalry, and artillery, — some black and 
some white, some good and some bad, — sent out 
by Sherman as a tub to the Forrest whale ; a 
diversion to keep this commander from joining 
Hood in Northern Georgia; though I doubt if 
even General Sherman in his moments of wildest 
enthusiasm anticipated just the issue that fol- 
lowed. Our march out was not rapid, and it 
w r as w T ell ordered. We were allowed to take our 
train, and old John Ellard's four stupendous 
mules drew our headquarters' wagon, well laden 
with the comforts we had accumulated during 
a long service, including a brand-new, well-fur- 



128 WHIP AND SPUR. 

nished, and abundantly stored camp-chest that 
had just arrived from St. Louis. So far as the 
comforts of a home for five youngsters can be 
stored in one mule-wagon, we were well supplied 
for a campaign of any length ; and judging from 
the mess-tables to which we were invited, others 
of the command were no less well provided. In 
due time we reached the town of Ripley, a rather 
pretty New-England-looking village, but, like all 
Southern towns at that time, entirely devoid of 
men and overflowing with women of the most 
venomous and spiteful sort, who did all in their 
power to add to the interest of the Sunday even- 
ing we passed in their company. 

We had some light skirmishing on our arrival, 
but whoever it was that attacked us withdrew 
and left us in undisturbed possession of the com- 
fortable rooms and fireplaces of the town. Our 
next day's march brought us to a large open 
plantation on a commanding hill, whence our 
evening scouting-parties soon found the enemy 
posted in some force and apparently disposed 
for an engagement. 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 129 

It seemed always Forrest's plan to select his 
own fighting-ground, and the plan of our com- 
manders to gratify him. Sturgis committed the 
usual folly of trying to hold every inch he had 
gained, and of forming his line of battle on the 
head of the column and under fire. 

We breakfasted at three in the morning, and 
marched at half past four. My command had 
the advance. The enemy allowed himself to be 
easily driven until half past eight, when he made 
some show of resistance. At this time the last 
of our regiments could hardly have left the 
camping-ground, and probably a judicious re- 
treat would have drawn Forrest's whole force 
back to the open country we had left. But 
"retreat" was not yet written on our banners 
(of that day), and orders came from our general 
to support the advance-guard, form line of battle, 
and hold our position. So far as the cavalry 
brigade was concerned this was easily done, and 
we got into good line near the edge of a wood 
without difficulty. Here, for four mortal hours, 
or until half past twelve, we carried on a tol- 
6* i 



130 WHIP AND SPUR. 

erably equal warfare, both sides blazing away 
at each other with little effect across the six 
hundred yards of cleared valley that lay be- 
tween two skirts of wood. So far as the endur- 
ance of our troops was concerned, this engagement 
could have been kept up until nightfall, though 
our ranks were slowly thinning. Several desper- 
ate charges were made on our position, and were 
repulsed with considerable loss to both sides. 
Pending the arrival of the infantry it would 
have been folly for us to attempt a further 
advance, but had we been properly supported, 
or, better, had we at once fallen back upon our 
support, we might have given, as the post helium 
reports of Forrest's officers show, a better end- 
ing to the day's work. It was only at half past 
twelve, when our ammunition was reduced to five 
rounds per man, and when our battery had fired 
its last shot, that the infantry began to arrive, 
and then they came a regiment at a time, or only 
so fast as the Forrest mill could grind them up 
in detail. 

They had taken our place, and we had with- 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 131 

drawn to their rear, where we were joined by 
one after another of the defeated or exhausted 
infantry regiments. Little by little the enemy 
pressed upon us, gaining rod after rod of our 
position, until finally our last arriving troops, a 
splendid colored regiment, reached the field of 
battle at double-quick, breathless and beaten by 
their own speed, barely in time to check the 
assault until we could cross the creek and move 
toward the rear. The retreat was but fairly be- 
gun when w r e came upon our train of two hundred 
wagons piled pell-mell in a small field and blocked 
in beyond the possibility of removal. With sad 
eyes we saw John Ellard cut his traces and leave 
all that was dear to us — tents, camp-chest, poker- 
table, and all that we cherished — to inevitable 
capture. The train was our tub to the whale; 
and while Forrest's men were sacking our treas- 
ures, and refilling the caissons of all our batteries, 
which they had captured, we had time to form 
for the retreat, more or less orderly according 
as we had come early or late off the field. The 
demoralizing roar of our own guns, and the howl- 



132 WHIP AND SPUR. 

ing over our heads of our own shells, together 
with the sharp rattle of musketry in our rear, 
hastened and saddened the ignominious flight of 
the head of our column, though, for some reason, 
the enemy's advance upon us was slow. 

All that long night we marched on, without 
food and without rest. At early dawn we reached 
Ripley, where we paused for breath. Max had 
been ridden almost uninterruptedly for twenty- 
four hours, and for four hours had done the con- 
stant hard work that the supervision of a long 
line in active engagement had made necessary; 
and he was glad to be unsaddled and turned for 
fifteen minutes into a scantily grown paddock, 
where he rolled and nibbled and refreshed him- 
self as much as ordinary horses do with a whole 
night's rest. The ambulances with our groaning 
wounded men came pouring into the village, and 
to our surprise, those women, who had so recently 
given only evidence of a horrified hatred, pressed 
round to offer every aid that lay in their power, 
and to comfort our suffering men as only kind- 
hearted women can. 



CAMPAIGNING WITH M AX. 133 

With the increasing daylight the pursuit was 
reopened with vigor, and on we went, and ever 
on, marching all that day, our rear-guard being 
constantly engaged, and hundreds of our men 
being captured, thousands more scattering into 
the woods. My lieutenant-colonel, Von Helm- 
rich, who had been for twenty-eight years a 
cavalry officer in Germany, and who, after thir- 
teen months in Libby Prison, had overtaken us 
as w r e were leaving Memphis, was. recaptured 
and carried back to Richmond, — to die of a 
good dinner on his second release, ten months 
later. At nightfall, the pursuit growing weak, 
we halted to collect together our stragglers, 
but not to rest, and after a short half-hour 
pushed on again ; and all that interminable 
night, and until half past ten the next morn- 
ing, when we reached Colliersville and the rail- 
road, reinforcements, and supplies, we marched, 
marched, marched, without rest, without sleep, 
and without food. The cavalry-men were mainly 
dismounted and driving their tired jades before 
them, only Max and a few others carrying their 



134 WHIP AND SPUE. 

riders to the very end, and coming in with a 
whinny of content to the familiar stables and 
back-yards of the little town. 

Most other officers whose service had been as 
constant as mine had had extra horses to ride 
for relief; but I had never yet found march too 
long for Max's wiry sinews, and trusted to him 
alone. He had now been ridden almost abso- 
lutely without intermission, and much of the 
time at a gallop or a rapid trot, for fifty-four 
hours. I had had for my own support the 
excitement and then the anxious despair of re- 
sponsible service, and Ike had filled his haver- 
sack with hard-bread from John Ellard's aban- 
doned wagon; an occasional nibble at this, and 
unlimited pipes of tobacco, had fortified me in 
my endurance of the work; but Max had had 
in the whole time not the half of what he would 
have made light of for a single meal. I have 
known and have written about brilliant feats 
of other horses, but as I look over the whole 
range of all the best animals I have seen, I 
bow with respect to the wonderful courage, en- 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 135 

durance, and fidelity of this superbly useful 
brute. 

There is an elasticity in youth and health, 
trained and hardened by years of active field- 
service, which asserts itself under the most de- 
pressing circumstances. Even this shameful and 
horrible defeat and flight had their ludicrous 
incidents, which we were permitted to appreci- 
ate. Thus, for instance, during a lull in the 
engagement at Guntown, I had seated myself in 
a rush-bottomed chair under the lee of a broad 
tree-trunk ; a prudent pig, suspecting danger, 
had taken shelter between the legs of the chair, 
leaving, however, his rear unprotected. Random 
bullets have an odd way of finding weak places, 
and it was due to one of these that I was un- 
seated, with an accompaniment of squeal, by the 
rapid and articulate flight of my companion. 

During our last night's march, my brigade 
having the advance, and I being at its rear, 
Grierson ordered me to prevent the pushing 
ahead of the stragglers of the other brigades, 
who were to be recognized, he reminded me, by 



136 WHIP AND SPUR. 

their wearing hats (mine wore caps). The order 
was peremptory, and was to be enforced even at 
the cost of cutting the offenders down. Grief- 
son's adjutant was at my side ; we were all 
sleeping more or less of the time, but constantly 
some hatted straggler was detected pushing 
toward the front, and ordered back, — the ad- 
jutant being especially sharp-eyed in detecting 
the mutilated sugar-loaves through the gloom. 
Finally, close to my right and pushing slowly 
to the front, in a loug-strided walk, came a gray 
horse with a hatted rider, — an india-rubber pon- 
cho covering his uniform. I ordered him back 
the adjutant, eager for the enforcement of the 
order, remonstrated at the man's disobedience 
I ordered again, but without result; the adju 
tant ejaculated, " Damn him, cut him down ! ' 
I drew my sabre and laid its flat in one long, 
stinging welt across that black poncho : " 



who are you hitting 1 ?" Then we both remem 
bered that Grierson too wore a hat; and I ten- 
der him here my public acknowledgment of a 
good-nature so great that an evening reunion in 



CAMPAIGNING WITH MAX. 137 

Memphis over a dozen of wine won his gener- 
ous silence. 

One might go on with interminable gossip 
over incidents of camp and field for which at 
this late day only scant interest is felt ; but 
nothing that I could say more would probably 
aid my purpose, which has been simply by a 
trifling sketch to recall the jollity, the comfort, 
the suffering, and the misery of campaign life, 
and to show how in the field more than any- 
where else one learns to cherish and to depend 
upon a faithful and honest and willing comrade 
like my royal old Max. 



i^ 

* 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 




(circumstantially true.) 

HE war was Dot quite over, but my 
regiment was old enough to have grown 
too small for a colonel, and I sat, the 
dismallest of all men, a "mustered-out" officer, 
sated with such good things as a suddenly ar- 
rested income had allowed me, over an after- 
dinner table in a little room at the Athenaeum 
Club. My coffee was gone to its dregs; the 
closing day was shutting down gloomily in such 
a weary rain as only a New York back -yard 
ever knows ; and I was wondering what was to 
become of a man whom four years of cavalry 
service had estranged from every good and use- 
ful thing in life. The only career that then 
seemed worth running was run out for me ; and, 
worst of all, my pay had been finally stopped. 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 139 

The world was before me for a choice, but I 
had no choice. The only thing I could do was 
to command mounted troops, and commanders 
of mounted troops were not in demand. Ages 
ago I had known how to do other things, but 
the knowledge had gone from me, and was not 
to be recalled so long as I had enough money 
left w T ith which to be unhappy in idle forebod- 
ing. I had not laid down my life in the war, 
but during its wonderful four years I had laid 
down, so completely, the ways of life of a sober 
and industrious citizen, and had soaked my whole 
nature so full of the subtile ether of idleness 
and vagabondism, that it seemed as easy and as 
natural to become the Aladdin I might have 
dreamed myself to be as the delver I had really 
been. With a heavy heart, then, and a full 
stomach, I sat in a half-disconsolate, half-remi- 
niscent, not wholly unhappy mood, relapsing with 
post - prandial ease into that befogged intellec- 
tual condition in which even the drizzle against 
the window-panes can confuse itself with the 
patter on a tent roof ; and the charm of the 



140 WHIP AND SPUR. 

old wanderings came over me again, filling my 
table with the old comrades, even elevating my 
cigar to a brier-wood, and recalling such fellow- 
ship as only tent-life ever knows. 

Such dreaming is always interrupted, else it 
would never end ; mine was disturbed by a small 
card on a small salver, held meekly across the 
table by the meekest of waiters. 

The card bore the name "Adolf zu Dohna- 
Schlodien," and a count's coronet, — a count's 
coronet and "zu" (a touch above "von")! I 
remembered to have seen a letter from my ad- 
jutant to the Prussian Consul in Philadelphia, 
asking him to obtain information about a hand- 
some young musical " Graf zu " something, who 
was creating a sensation in St. Louis society, 
and the " zu " seemed to indicate this as the 
party in question; he had spoken of him as 
having defective front teeth, which seemed to be 
pointing to the " color and distinguishing marks," 
known in Herd Book pedigrees, and human pass- 
ports, — a means of identification I resolved to 
make use of; for my experience with the Ger- 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 141 

man nobility in America had been rather wide 
than remunerative. 

The " Herr zu " had waited in the hall, and 
was standing under the full light of the lamp. 
He was very tall, very slight, and very young, 
apparently not more than twenty, modestly 
dressed, and quiet in his manner. He was not 
strikingly handsome, though very well looking. 
His hands were the most perfect I ever saw, 
and the ungloved one showed careful attention. 
There was no defect noticeable in his front 
teeth. *He bowed slightly and handed me a let- 
ter. It was from Voisin, my former adjutant, 
but it was not exactly a letter of introduction. 
At least, it was less cordial than Voisin's letters 
of introduction were wont to be. Yet it was 
kind. Without commending the Count as a 
bosom friend, he still said he was much inter- 
ested in him, had reason to believe in him, was 
sorry for him, had given him material aid, and 
was very desirous that he should pull through 
some pecuniary troubles, which he could do only 
by enlisting in the Regular Army, and receiving 



142 WHIP AND SPUE. 

his bounty. From this he would give me money 
to release his baggage, which was valuable, from 
some inconveniences that were then attending it 
in St. Louis. Would I get him enlisted? He 
said he would enlist, and would prefer to be 
known under the name Adolph Danforth. The 
gentleman himself took early occasion to express 
this preference. 

I debated a little what to do. He was not 
introduced as a friend, only as a person in need 
of help ; yet Voisin believed in him, and he had 
asked a service that he would not have asked for 
an unworthy man. I engaged him in conversa- 
tion and got him to smile. It was a very frank 
smile, but it displayed a singular defect far up 
on the front teeth. This decided me. He was 
the same Graf zu whose position had been asked 
of the Prussian Consul, and I knew he had learned 
that the Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien, an officer in 
the Gardecorps Ktirassier, was of the highest 
nobility and of a family of great wealth. There 
was evidently no technical reason why the poor 
fellow should not be received cordially and well 



nOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 143 

treated. So we went back to the smoking-room, 
and with fresh coffee and cigars opened an ac- 
quaintance which resulted not altogether un- 
eventfully. 

He was not obtrusive. His story was not forced 
upon me ; but as I already had its thread, I was 
able to draw it from him in a natural way, and 
he told it very frankly, though halting a little at 
its more important turnings, as if wondering how 
its development would strike me. There was just 
enough of hesitancy over a harrowing tale to throw 
on myself the responsibility of learning it. 

He had been brought up by the tenderest of 
mothers at the castle of Schlodien (I think in 
Silesia), had early joined the Cuirassiers of the 
Body Guard, had fought a fatal duel in which he 
had been the aggressor, and had been condemned 
to the Fortress of Spandau. Only his mother's 
great influence (exercised without the knowledge 
of his stern and much older father, who was then 
on his distant estates) had secured for him an 
opportunity to escape.. He had come directly to 
America, and had remained near Boston until he 



144 WHIP AND SPUR. 

received intimation (again the result of his moth- 
er's influence with Baron Gerolt, the Prussian 
Minister at Washington) that his return under 
the Extradition Treaty was being urged at the 
solicitation of the family of his fallen antagonist. 
He had then taken refuge in a remote town in 
South Missouri, where he amused himself with 
shooting. His mother had written to him but 
once, and had not been able to send him money. 
He had at last returned to St. Louis, where he 
had contracted some small debts which Voisin 
and another kind friend had assumed. To reim- 
burse them and to gain more perfect seclusion, 
he had resolved to enlist in the Kegular Army. 
It was a sad conclusion of his career, but as an 
honorable man (and a pursued one) he had no 
choice but to accept it. 

It was the old story, — noblesse oblige. There 
was but one way out of a sad affair, and — like a 
very Graf zu — this stripling, who had been born 
and bred to a better fate, faced the penalty of 
his misfortune without flinching. I tried infinite 
suggestions, but nothing else offered the imme- 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 145 

diate money which alone could relieve him of 
debt and restore him his wardrobe and the por- 
traits of his mother and sister, which with a few 
well-worn letters, were all he had to cheer him in 
his exile. We sat till far into the night and until 
my kindest sympathies were fully aroused by the 
utter and almost childlike simplicity and frank- 
ness with which the poor boy told of his sorrows. 
I had been taught by a very ample experience to 
look with much caution on German counts and 
barons, — an experience that, if it was worth 
what it had cost, I could not prize too highly; 
but here was an entirely new type, a combination 
of the gentlest breeding with an unsophistication 
that argued more of a mother's care than of gar- 
rison influences, and an utter absence of the devil- 
may-care manner that army life in Germany had 
hitherto seemed to give. With the improvidence 
of one who had never known the lack of money, 
he had lodged himself at the Everett House ; and 
as I left him at its door, I resolved to lose no 
time in getting him enlisted and stopping an 
expense that would only add to his troubles. 
7 j 



146 WHIP AND SPUR. 

The next day I saw the official who had charge 
of the making up of the city's quota, and easily 
arranged for the examination of my candidate. 
Dohna begged me to secure his admission to a 
command whose officers would be able to appre- 
ciate his difficult position, and a weary time I had 
of it. At last it was all arranged ; he had passed, 
with much shock to his sensibilities, the surgeon's 
examination, and had been enrolled in a company 
of Regular Infantry, whose captain (then serving 
on the general staff of the department) had ac- 
quired a sympathy for him not less than my own. 
His bounty (over seven hundred dollars) he put 
into my hands, and he went with me to Adams's 
Express office, where we sent more than half the 
sum to St. Louis, — the full amount of his indebt- 
edness. One specified trunk was to be sent to 
the Everett House, and the rest of his luggage — 
which Voisin had described as valuable — to me. 
I received by an early mail the receipt of the St. 
Louis express-office for it, and found it most con- 
venient to let it lie for the present, addressed to 
me personally, at the office in New York. It 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 147 

would be useless to Dohna in the arrny, and I 
was to take care of it for him. 

The captain of the company in which he was 
enlisted secured him a furlough for ten days, 
and, to show his gratitude, he invited us both 
to dine with him at the Everett. We sat down 
at seven, and we sat long. The best that either 
cellar or kitchen afforded w T as spread before us 
in wasteful profusion, and our host, temperate 
in his sipping, but eating with the appetite of 
youth, seemed only to regret the limit of our 
capacity. As we walked across the square, filled 
and with the kindest emotions, we planned 
means for so occupying the remaining days of 
the furlough as to allow but little opportunity 
for money-spending. His company was at Fort 
Trumbull, and after he joined he would be safe. 

The next day being Saturday, I took him to 
my father's house in the country, where his un- 
fortunate story was already known, and where 
as much real interest was felt in him as the 
good people of Connecticut ever accord to a du- 
ellist. He had a friend living farther out on 



148 WHIP AND SPUR. 

the New Haven road, and he took an early 
train to see her (this was a new feature), re- 
turning to me in the evening. I met him at 
the depot. He wore the superb uniform over- 
coat of the Gardecorps Kiirassier, long, flowing, 
and rich, with a broad, scarlet-lined fur collar. 
It was caught across the throat with a scarlet 
snood, and hung loosely from the shoulders. It 
made his six feet two really becoming. At 
home he was easy but very quiet, saying little 
but saying it very well, and he won as much 
confidence as the stain on his moral character 
would allow. Like most of his class, he knew 
and cared absolutely nothing for what interests 
the New England mind, and he would early 
have palled on our taste but for his music. 
His performance was skilful; he played difficult 
music, and he played it very well, but without 
vanity or apparent consciousness. When not 
occupied in this way, and when not addressed, 
he neither spoke nor read, apparently he did 
not even think, but relapsed into a sad and 
somewhat vacant reticence. Bat for our knowl- 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 149 

edge of his misfortunes, he would have been un- 
interesting. On Sunday he gave me a new con- 
fidence. His friend up the road was an Everett 
House acquaintance, made when he first came 
from Boston. She was an angel ! She knew his 
sad story, and she had given him her Puritan 
heart. In the trying days to come I was to be 
the link that should bind them in their corre- 
spondence. She must not know of his degraded 
position, and all letters were to pass under cover 
to me. Even noblesse did not hide the tears 
that this prospect of long separation wrung from 
him, and he poured out his grief with most 
touching unrestraint. This was the one sorrow 
of his life that even his trained equanimity 
could not conquer. It made me still more re- 
spect his simple, honest nature and his un- 
feigned grief. I was doubly sorry that this last 
trial of separated love should be added to his 
cup of bitterness. In our long Sunday talk he 
told me of his home, and showed me the singu- 
larly beautiful photographs of his mother and 
sister, and — quite incidentally — one of himself 



150 WHIP AND SPUR. 

in the full uniform of his regiment, bearing on 
its back the imprint of a Berlin photographer. 
He evinced a natural curiosity about the mode 
of our garrison life, and I prepared him as 
gently as I could for a decided change from his 
former customs. It was, of course, depressing 
to him, but he bore the prospect like a man, 
and gave it no importance as compared with his 
more essential downfall. Pie had seen enough 
of our troops to be especially uneasy at the 
prospect of an ill-fitting uniform. In the mat- 
ter of linen he was well provided, but he was 
really unhappy over the thought of adapting his 
long and easy figure to a clothing-contractor's 
idea of proportion. So it was arranged that he 
should go to my tailor and be suitably clad, 
according to regulation of course, but also ac- 
cording to measure. He proposed, too, to leave 
his overcoat for some repairs and to be cared 
for while he should have no use for it. I gave 
the tailor assurances of prompt payment. 

One fine morning Dohna came to my room in 
his new rig and bade me a brave good-by. He 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 151 

was off for Fort Trumbull. I felt an almost 
parental sorrow over his going, and had much 
misgiving as to his ability to face his ill-bred 
soldier comrades. There came soon after a let- 
ter to say that he was well treated personally, 
only the rations were so horrible; pork and salt 
beef and beans and molasses. He could not eat 
such things, and he was growing faint for want 
of food. I had seen such dainty appetites cuued 
too often to have any fear on this score, and 
only replied in general terms of encouragement, 
and asked for frequent letters. These came. 
There were no incidents of his life that were 
not described almost with wonder, for a noble 
officer of the Gardecorps of the king of Prussia 
knows really nothing of the ways of life of the 
men he is supposed to command. Often there 
were thick letters for the fiancee, and answers 
to these (also thick) had often to be forwarded. 
I felt the enthusiastic glow natural to one who 
carries alone the tender secrets of younger 
lovers, and was not altogether unhappy under 
the subjective romance of my mediation. 



152 WHIP AND SPUR. 

Sometimes there were touching tales of 
trouble. Once he had been detailed to the 
"police" squad, and had to clean spittoons and 
do other menial work. This was a touch of 
reality that fairly opened his eyes to his abase- 
ment, and he wrote much more sadly than ever 
before, making me sad, too, to think how pow- 
erless I was to help him in any way. A few 
days later he sent a wail of real agony. While 
he had been out on drill, some scoundrel had 
broken into his satchel and had stolen all his 
papers, — his letters from his mother, her pho- 
tograph, and those of his sister and his sweet- 
heart, and all the bundle of affectionate epistles 
over which he had pored again and again in his 
desolation. The loss was absolutely heart-break- 
ing and irreparable, and he had passed hours 
sitting on the rocks at the shore, pouring bitter 
tears into the Thames. This was a blow to me 
too. I knew that Dohna was of a simple mind, 
and utterly without resources within himself; 
but he was also of a simple heart, and one 
could only grieve over this last blow as over 






HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 153 



the sorrows of a helpless little child. However, 
I wrote all I could to encourage him, and was 
gratified, though a little surprised, to see how 
soon he became cheerful again, and how ear- 
nestly he seemed to have set about the work 
of becoming a really good soldier. After a time 
the captain of his company — still in New York 
and maintaining a lively interest in the poor fel- 
low's case — procured an order for him to go* to 
Annapolis to be examined for promotion. He 
was already a sergeant, and a pretty good one. 
He stopped in New York a few days on his way 
through for some refitting, — again at my tailor's. 
On his way back he stopped again to tell of his 
failure. I was delicate about questioning him 
too closely, but I learned enough to suppose that 
different ideas as to practical education are en- 
tertained by a board of army examiners and by 
a fond young mother in the remote castle of 
Schlodien ; but I encouraged him to believe that 
a little more study would enable him to pass 
the second examination that had been promised 
him, and he rejoined his company. 



154 WHIP AND SPUR. 

In the general mustering-out Voisin had been 
set free and had joined me in New York, and had, 
naturally, participated in all my interest in. the 
quondam Count. He gradually, as an adjutant 
should, assumed the correspondence, which was 
voluminous, and by the time we were informed 
that Dohna was detailed for recruiting duty in 
the city, neither he nor I was glad to know it. 
Something more than a feeling of regretful sym- 
pathy is necessary to the enjoyment of frequent 
companionship, and we both felt that the fact of 
having credit with a tailor was a dangerous ele- 
ment in the possible future combinations. How- 
ever, Dohna's arrival at our room followed close 
upon the announcement of the order. He was 
still simple in his way and of modest deportment, 
but he seemed to have accepted his new life 
almost too entirely, and he had come to look not 
very much out of place among his comrades. 
Their quarters were in a basement in Chambers 
Street, back of the City Hall, where we occasion- 
ally dropped in to see him. After a while he 
was always out when we called, and once when I 






HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 155 

stopped to give him a foreign letter, sent to my 
care, I was told that he had not been there for 
a week, bnt one of the men volunteered to find 
him. He came that night to the club for his 
letter, in civilian's dress, and appeared much as 
he did when I first saw him, except that he had 
two beautiful false teeth, in the place of the de- 
fective ones. I gave him his letter, a long one 
from Berlin, from his father. He showed Voisin 
the postscript, in which it was stated that a 
box containing a breech-loading shot-gun, a dozen 
shirts, and a draft for five hundred thalers would 
be forwarded by the Hamburg line to my care. 
On the strength of this he hoped it would not 
inconvenience us to advance him a couple of hun- 
dred dollars. It was thus far inconvenient that 
we were obliged to decline, which gave him no 
offence, and he invited us to dine with him the 
following day at the Everett House. 

At this point, in view of the extreme youth 
and inexperience of our friend, we took occasion 
to read him a short homily on the value of 
economy, and to urge him immediately to leave 



156 WHIP AND SPUR 

the Everett, return to his barracks in Chambers 
Street, and as he valued his future peace of mind 
to avoid running in debt ; mildly hinting that, 
if found in the public streets without his uni- 
form, he would be very likely to get himself into 
trouble. He begged that we would not expose 
him, and promised to return that very night. 
Then for some time we lost sight of him; his 
captain said that, so far as he knew, he was at- 
tentive to his duty with the recruiting squad, 
and he certainly kept out of our way. The box 
from Germany did not arrive. No more letters 
came, and we had no occasion to seek him out. 
It was evident that he was no longer unhappy, 
and so our interest in him, though still warm, 
remained inactive. 

One night I was awakened, quite late, by Voi- 
sin, sitting on the side of my bed, big-eyed and 
excited, and with a wonderful story to tell. He 
had been, at the request of the counsel of the 
Prussian Consul, to the detectives' rooms at police 
headquarters. Here he had been questioned as 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 157 

to his knowledge of one Adolph Danforth, alias 
Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien, alias Fritz Stabeuow, 
and had subsequently had an interview with that 
interesting youth in the lock-up. 

The glory had all departed. He had been there 
forty-eight hours, was unwashed, uncombed, stol- 
id, comfortable, and quite at home. There was 
no remnant left of the simple and modest de- 
meanor o*f the well-bred aristocrat. It was hard 
to see a trace of likeness to the Kiirassier officer 
with whose photograph we were familiar. The 
obligations of noblesse seemed to be entirely re- 
moved, and there was nothing left but plain, 
ignoble Fritz Stabenow. An examination of his 
pockets developed a singular folly. He had kept 
every scrap of paper on which a word had ever 
been written to him. Tailors' bills, love-letters, 
duns, photographs of half a dozen different girls, 
all were huddled together. He had a package of 
the Count Dohna cards and the plate from which 
they had been printed, — made in Boston ; a let- 
ter of credit from a banking-house in Berlin to 
its New York correspondent had the copperplate 



158 WHIP AND SPUR. 

card of the firm on the paper, but the paper was 
ruled as a German banker's paper never is, and 
the plate from which the card had been printed 
(also made in Boston) was in the envelope with 
it. A letter from plain father Stabenow enclosed 
photographs of still plainer mother and sister 
Stabenow, which were a sad contrast to the glory 
of the Countess Dohna's picture. The father's 
letter was fall of kindly reproof and affectionate 
regret. "Ach ! Fritz, ich h'atte das von Dir nicht 
gedacht," — "I never thought that of you"; but 
it was forgiving too, and promised the remittance, 
clothing, and gun I have spoken of before. The 
papers, for the loss of which such tears had been 
shed at Fort Trumbull, were all there in their 
well-worn companionship with a soiled paper- 
collar, and that badge of dawning civilization, a 
tooth-brush. 

Here were also two photographs, one of the 
statue of Frederick the Great in Berlin on the 
card of a St. Louis photographer, and another 
of himself in Prussian uniform, on the card of 
a Berlin photographer. The pictures had been 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 159 

" lifted " and changed to the different cards. A 
more careful neglect of track-covering was never 
known. The evidence of all his deceptions had 
been studiously preserved. 

Voisin had given him a dollar to buy some 
necessary articles, and had left him to his fate. 

The disillusion was complete, and I saw that 
I had been swindled by a false count even more 
completely than I ever had been by real barons, 
— which is much to say. 

Voisin had gathered from the Consul's lawyer 
that this Stabenow, a valet of the veritable Count 
Dohna, had been one of a party who had robbed 
him and committed other serious crimes, and he 
had fled to this country, with his master's uniform, 
a valuable wardrobe, and costly jewels. He had 
here undertaken to personify the Count, and had 
had on the whole not an unhappy time, especially 
since he came to New York in recruiting service. 
He had finally been arrested on the complaint of 
a lady, one of the many whom he had attempted 
to blackmail, by threatening exposure through let- 
ters they had written him in the kindest spirit. 



160 WHIP AND SPUR. 

Fortunately this one had had the good sense to 
refer the matter to her husband, who brought 
the interesting career to a close. He had ob- 
tained several thousand dollars in this way from 
different persons, and had contracted considerable 
debts in all directions. The Everett House was 
an especial sufferer. 

I felt that my claim was secured by the lug- 
gage at the express-office, and I called for it the 
next day. The gentlemanly clerk of the establish- 
ment blandly showed me my name, neatly written 
in a strange Teutonic hand, to a receipt for the 
property. Just then I had information that a 
box addressed to my care was lying at the Hobo- 
ken office of the German steamers. Indiscreetly 
mentioning this fact to the Prussian Consul's law- 
yer, I was informed that it would be necessary 
to take the box in evidence, and I prudently 
refrained from making further efforts for its re- 
covery. 

It was with a chastened spirit that I paid a 
considerable bill at my tailor's and ordered the 
overcoat sent to nry address; and it was with 



HOW I GOT MY OVERCOAT. 161 

only mitigated satisfaction that I heard of the 
sending in irons to his company in California of 
deserter Stabenow. 

If the Herr Lieutenant Graf zu Dohna-Schlo- 
dien of the Gardecorps Kiirassier is still living, 
I beg to inform him that his overcoat — the only 
memento of a grave Schwindelei — is now a com- 
fortable wrap to a Rhode Island farmer, who 
hopes that its rightful owner is as snugly clad 
in his winter rides about Versailles. 




TWO SCOUTS. 




N the desultory and sporadic warfare car- 
ried on in the Southwest, the scout — • 
or " skeout," according to the dialect 
of the region — was a very important element 
of our organization, and it is amusing now to 
recall the variety of odd-fish of every descrip- 
tion who applied for the remunerative employ- 
ment that this branch of the service afforded. 

The interest of our life at Union City was not 
a little enhanced by two specimens of this genus 
with whom we had much to do, — Pat Dixon 
and "The Blind Preacher." 

One day the guard brought in a suspicious 
character from the picket-line. He was about 
twenty-five years old, long, lank, and dusky, — 
a sort of half-Indian, half-Irish looking fellow, 



TWO SCOUTS. 163 



with uncombed hair and an over-prominent quid 
of tobacco. He rode the usual "nag" of the 
country, — an animal with more blood than bone 
and more vice than beauty. He dismounted, 
passed his bridle over his arm, and '-'squatted," 
— the usual posture of the country. " The 
Hun," the professional bully of all our culprits, 
took this creature in hand, and presently came 
in with a suggestion that I had better see him 
alone. He followed me cautiously to one side, 
leading his horse with him, and squatted again 
when we had halted at a safe distance from 
curious ears. 

"I'm Pat Dixon. I live down Troy way on 
the North Fork. Ye see, when this yer muss 
fust broke out I did n't go to take no sides in 
it. But Merry weather's men they come along a 
little 'fore sun-up, last month was a year, an' 
they taken the only nag we had left. I 'd had 
him hid out all summer, but some derned skunk 
done found him out. I heern the cusses a tramp- 
in' roun' an' I was goin' to take a crack at 'em 
for 'good mornin',' but, you see, I knowed if I 



164 WHIP AND SPUR. 

did they 'd just burn the old woman out, an' she 
don't git along but porely, anyhow, so I did n't. 
They conscripted the old man the year afore, an' 
he hain't been heern on sence. So I come to the 
conclushin that I wa' n't agoin' to stan' no such 
treatmint as that — by King ! an' I jest took to 
the bresh, an' I reckon I 've pestered them 'uns 
right smart. I ain't agoin' afoot long as theys 
hosses in West Tannisy, — you bet ! I was agoin' 
to jine you Yanks, but thinks sez I : ' Old Pat, 
you kin do a heap better in the bresh nor what 
you kin in no army,' and so I stuck to it. 0, 
now, I 'm squar' ! Frank Moore can tell you all 
'bout me ; I ain't no gum-game, I ain't. If you 
want a skeout, I 'm on hand, an' I don't want 
no pass, I kin git 'roun' in this kentry. 

" Which 1 hoss ? Well, 't ain't much of a nag, 
but theys more on 'em roun', an' if this 'un tuck- 
ers out I '11 git somethin' to ride. I ain't goin' 
afoot, — no, mam ! " 

This was very much the sort of talk "Mr." For- 
rest's emissaries used in seeking our services for 
his purposes; so, partly to secure ourselves on 



TWO SCOUTS. 165 



this point, and partly to give Dixon a good char- 
acter should he go out from our camp in his 
professional capacity, he was sent for a few days 
to the guard-house, until Frank Moore should 
return from an expedition. I believe Frank 
knew most of the vagabonds of Obion County, 
and he at once certified that this was no other 
than Pat Dixon ; that his story was true ; and 
that, while his controlling motives were not per- 
haps such as one would most admire, his uncon- 
querable hatred of Merry weather's men and all 
their confederates might be relied on with im- 
plicit confidence ; so Pat was engaged as an em- 
ploye of our Secret Service Department,' and sent 
outside the lines with a conspicuous assurance, as 
he left his fellow-prisoners, that if found again 
within our reach he would be hanged forthwith 
for a spy. I was riding on the road he took, and 
he gave me a leering wink as he departed, — with 
instructions to watch the movements of all gue- 
rilla bands in our front, and to bring speedily any 
information he might obtain. 

During the remaining months of our stay he 



166 WHIP AND SPUR. 

was almost ubiquitous. Every scouting-party 
that we sent out in any direction, though en- 
tirely without notice to him, was pretty sure to 
meet him with important information, just when 
information was most needed. 

This part of his work was done perfectly, but 
he seemed to regard his relation with us as a 
warrant for unending private iniquities. After 
his own code of morals he was a strictly virtuous 
man, but his code was of an extremely loose and 
pliable character. It is probably safe to say that 
he never murdered a Union man, and that, unless 
sorely tempted by the difference in value of the 
animals, he never forcibly exchanged horses with 
a Union widow ; neither, I believe, did he com- 
mit any offence against a known Rebel when 
there was a probability of his being found out 
and caught ; but the complaints that came to 
us of the manner in which he vented his pri- 
vate wrongs and carried on the feuds of his 
ancestors gave us frequent annoyance. Some- 
times it seemed necessary to recall his com- 
mission and declare him an outlaw, but just 



TWO SCOUTS. 167 



then there would transpire some particularly brill- 
iant achievement that showed him invaluable for 
our purposes. 

More than once, when our patrols reported the 
immediate presence of the enemy, Pat would turn 
up with the assurance that it was only so-and-so's 
"band," who had come into the neighborhood on 
a visiting or a marauding expedition, but with 
no intention of putting themselves in our way; 
and invariably we found his report to be correct. 
Indeed, so frequently did this happen that we 
became almost too confident in his assistance, 
and when an excitable picket shot at a donkey 
or a cow in the night-time, although the patrol 
of the guard went through the usual routine of 
investigation, we felt that there could be no se- 
rious attack or Dixon would have notified us. 

How he obtained his information we could not 
guess, and his own account of the matter was 
never satisfactory; but I believe that no consid- 
erable force of the enemy ever crossed the Mem- 
phis and Charleston Railroad (the whole State's 
width to the south of us) without our being 



168 WHIP AND SPUR. 



lily notified; and through this means we 
were several times enabled to telegraph to Co- 
lumbus early information of contemplated raids, 
— information that was not always heeded, as the 
surprise of Paducah (on the Ohio River) several 
days after our warning sufficiently proved. 

One ambition of this worthy man had to remain 
unsatisfied. How little this was due to the fact 
that we at the headquarters were all perfectly 
mounted, modesty makes it improper to state 
here ; but in our frequent meetings as we rode 
outside the lines, he rarely failed to tell of some 
particularly fine horse belonging to some partic- 
ularly bad man and especially virulent Rebel, 
which it would really be a virtue to "confisti- 
cate." The worthy fellow was not satisfied with 
his own conspicuous appropriations; he would 
fain have mounted our regiments on the weedy 
screws which the Rebel impressments had left 
for the horsing of the crippled region of Western 
Tennessee. Possibly, too, he may have had some 
lurking fear that there was a suspicion of iniquity 
in his thefts, and longed for the reassurance of 



TWO SCOUTS. 169 



similar conduct on the part of true men like our- 
selves. 

It was, of course, not long after the commence- 
ment of this active campaign against the rights 
of ownership, that we began to receive assurances 
on every hand that unless we could do something 
to repress Pat Dixon's vagabondage an outraged 
people would take the law into their own hands, 
and avenge the wrongs he had inflicted. With 
a laudable desire to prevent unnecessary blood- 
shed, I told him one day of the state of feeling 
against him, urging him to be more circumspect 
and to conduct himself like a decent man, else 
he would be hanged the first time he was caught ; 
intimating, too, that it would be improper for 
us to continue to employ him to such needless 
injury to an inoffensive people. His reply was 
characteristic. 

"Inoffensive, which? Mebbe you know these 
people an' mebbe you don't. I do ! and a dern'- 
der lot of unhung cutthroats an' hoss-thieves you 
can't find nowheres. As for hangin', you need n't 
give yourself no worryment 'bout that. They 're 



170 WHIP AND SPUR. 

safe enough to hang me if they ketch me, an' 
I guess I sha' n't hang no higher if I go right on 
my own gait. If you don't want to employ me 
you need n't ; theys enough corn an' bacon in th' 
Obion bottom to keep me awhile yet, and money 
ain't no 'count down here ; but, by King ! if I kin 
git a chance to tell you anything that them 'uns 
don't want you to know, you bet your skin I '11 
do it, an' you kin trust me every time, for I ain't 
goin' to lie, — not to your side, not if I know it. 
Why, you talk to me about inikities. I don't want 
to do no man any hurt ; but my old dad he was 
conscripted, an' me an' my brother Jake had to 
take to the bresh to save ourselves, an' then Jake 
he was shot in cold blood right afore my eyes, 
an' I made up my mind then an' there that I 
would n't give no quarter to the whole State of 
West Tannisy till this war was over an' ther' was 
some stronger hand than mine to do jestis an' to 
furnish revenge. That Vail I 've got to say about 
it. You need n't give yourself no oneasiness 'bout 
my doin's, I '11 answer for the hull on 'em ; an' 
p'r'aps the last thing you'll hear of Pat Dixon 



TWO SCOUTS. 171 



will be that he's hangin' to a tree somewheres 
down Troy way. I know I 'm booked for that 
if I 'hi ketched, and till I am ketched I 'm goin' 
my own gait." 

We had become too much accustomed to this 
state of feeling among the scanty Union popu- 
lation of the Southwest to be so shocked by it 
as we ought to have been, and it was not with- 
out sympathy with Dixon's wrongs that I let 
him go, with an earnest caution that he should 
mend his ways, if only for his own sake. 

It remains only to say that he did go his own 
gait, and that he went it with a desperation and 
an elan that I have never known equalled ; and 
that, months later, after our snug quarters at 
Union City had been turned over to a feeble band 
of home-guards, word came that they had been 
burned to the ground, and that Pat Dixon, be- 
trayed at last into the hands of the enemy, had 
been hanged in the woods near Troy. We could 
find no fault with the retribution that had over- 
taken him ; for, viewed with, the eyes of his exe- 
cutioners, he had richly merited it : but we had 



172 WHIP AND SPUR. 

learned to like him for his frank and generous 
qualities, and to make full allowance for the de- 
gree to which his rough, barbaric nature had 
been outraged and inflamed by the wrongs in- 
flicted on his family. 

A returning patrol one afternoon led to the 
parade-ground a sorry horse drawing an open 
wagon in which were a man and a woman. The 
woman had a cold-blooded, stolid look, and her 
eyes were filled with the overflowing hatred we 
so often inspired among her sex at the South. 
Her husband was dressed in black, and wore a 
rather scrupulously brushed but over-old silk hat. 
In his hand was a ponderous and bulging cotton 
umbrella. 

They had been taken "under suspicious cir- 
cumstances" at a house a few miles outside the 
lines, — the suspicion attaching only to the fact 
that they were not members of the family and 
seemed to have no particular business in that 
region. When asked for an explanation, the wo- 
man said she had nothing to say but that her 



TWO SCOUTS. . 173 



husband was a blind clergyman intending to fulfil 
an engagement to preach, and that she had driven 
him, as was her habit. He said nothing. It was 
a rule of our system to follow Hoyle's instruc- 
tions, and "when in doubt to take the trick": 
this pair were remanded to the guard-house. 

As they turned away, the reverend gentleman 
said, in a feeble voice, that if he could see me 
alone later in the evening, when he had recov- 
ered from the shock of his capture, I might be 
willing to talk with him. In the evening the 
Hun repaired to the dismantled warehouse where 
the prisoners were lodged, to hold conversation 
with the new-comers. When he came to the 
clergyman he found him so low spoken that 
their talk fell almost to a whisper, but it was 
whispered that he was to be taken alone, and 
subsequent disclosures led to his being brought 
to headquarters. He there informed me that he 
was a minister of the Methodist' church, Cana- 
dian by birth and education, but married to a 
lady of that region, and had been for some years 
engaged there in his capacity as a circuit preach- 



174 WHIP AND SPUE. 



er. He was quite blind, and found it impossi- 
ble to make his rounds without being driven. 

His sympathies were with the North, and he 
was burning to make himself useful in the only 
way left him by his infirmity. His wife was of 
a suspecting disposition, and their peaceful con- 
sorting required that she should always accom- 
pany him ; but, unfortunately, she was a violent 
secessionist, and he had been compelled, in the 
interest of the peaceful consorting above named, 
to acknowledge sympathy with her views, and to 
join her in her revilings of the Union army. 

All this made his position difficult, yet he 
believed that, if the opportunity were given him, 
he could hide his intention even from her, and 
could gather for us much useful information. 

He was a welcome visitor at the houses of the 
faithful, far and near, and warmed their hearts 
with frequent and feeling exhortation, as he 
gathered his little meetings at his nightly stop- 
ping-places. He was now about starting for the 
southern circuit, and had appointments to preach 
and to pray at every town between us and Bolivar. 



- i 



TWO SCOUTS. 175 



Evidently, if this man were honest in his in- 
tentions, he could be of great service, but I 
suggested the difficulty that having once started 
for an appointed round he could not return to 
bring us any information he might receive. To 
this he replied that his wife believed him to 
be in Forrest's service, and that he could at any 
time come as a spy into our lines. 

It seemed a very questionable case, but, after 
consultation with Voisin and the Hun, it was 
determined to give him a trial, to prevent his 
wife from seeing more than was necessary of our 
position, and to believe so much as we liked of 
the information he might give us. The condi- 
tions of the engagement were agreed upon, and 
after a severe public admonition, and threats es- 
pecially appalling to his wife, he was sent out- 
side the lines, with hints of the serious conse- 
quences that would follow his second capture. 

We were never quite sure that his wife was 
wrong in crediting him with complicity with 
Forrest; but the worst that could be said of 
him (and this was very likely true) was that he 



176 WHIP AND SPUR. 

was pre-eminently a man of peace, and if he 
gave information to both sides, it was always 
information in compliance with the injunctions 
of his sacred calling. The Rebel forces several 
times crossed into Tennessee, and came toward 
ns in numbers that indicated foul intentions, 
but, from the time our pious friend first visited 
us, they invariably withdrew without an engage- 
ment. Frequently small expeditions of our own 
forces went scouting to the southward, and were 
checked and turned back by the reports of this 
benevolent man. 

He may have kept us from the successful ful- 
filment of some bloody intentions, but we had 
occasion to know from other sources that he 
sometimes kept small detachments of our troops 
from falling in with overpowering numbers of 
the enemy. Be the theory what it may, from 
November until February there was no conflict 
of arms in all the counties we traversed, and 
neither side advanced to within deadly range of 
the other. 

The processes of this emissary were hidden 



TWO SCOUTS. 177 



and curious. He was employed in a much more 
regulated manner than Dixon, and we generally 
knew his whereabouts. Every interview had with 
him, either within our own camp or when we 
were abroad, had to be so skilfully managed that 
no suspicion, even in the eyes of his catlike wife, 
should attach to him. He never came into our 
lines except as an unwilling prisoner, and was 
never sent without them without dire admoni- 
tion as to the consequences of his return. 

On one occasion Pat Dixon reported that a 
detachment of Forrest's command, about three 
hundred strong, had crossed the railroad and 
was moving north in the direction of our camp. 
At this time the preacher was near us, and I 
had an interview with him. He doubted the 
report, but would investigate. I told him we 
would start the next day, with five hundred 
men, in the direction of Trenton, — where he 
was to hold a prayer-meeting at the house of 
one of Forrest's captains. The meeting was held, 
and after it was over, the subject of the advance 
was talked over very freely by the officers pres- 

8* L 



178 WHIP AND SPUE. 

ent, he sitting in a rapt state of unconscious- 
ness — his thoughts on higher things — at the 
chimney-corner. Pleading an early appointment 
at McKenzie's Station for the following day, he 
left as soon as the moon was up, and drove to 
the house of a friend in the village. His wife 
supposed that he was coming with a false re- 
port to lead us into a trap laid for us. 

We arrived at McKenzie's at one o'clock in 
the morning, after a detestably cold, hard ride, 
and took up our quarters in a half-finished and 
half-furnished house, where we struggled the 
whole night through in the endeavor to get 
heat out of a fire of wet dead-wood. Early in 
the morning the Hun started out, in his fiercest 
mood, with a small escort, seeking for informa- 
tion and hunting up suspicious characters. At 
breakfast-time he came upon a large family com- 
fortably seated at table, with our preacher, and 
his wife as guests. 

He was asked to " sit by." " Thank you ; I 
have come for more serious business. Who is 
at the head of this house ] I should like to 



TWO SCOUTS. 179 



see you alone, sir." The trembling, invalided 
paterfamilias was taken into an adjoining room, 
and put through the usual course of questions 
as to his age, place of birth, occupation, condi- 
tion as to literacy, the number of negroes owned, 
the amount of land, what relatives in the Rebel 
army, to what extent a sympathizer with the 
Rebellion, when he had last seen any Rebel sol- 
diers or scouts or guerillas or suspicious per- 
sons of any description, and so on, through the 
tortuous and aggravating list that only a lawyer 
could invent. Questions and answers were taken 
down in writing. The sterner questions were 
spoken in a voice audible to the terror-stricken 
family in the adjoining room. The man, of 
course, communicated nothing, and probably knew 
nothing, of the least consequence. He was sent 
to a m third room and kept under guard. His 
case disposed of, his w T ife was examined in like 
manner, and then the other members of the 
family. Finally, the coast being clear, our emis- 
sary was sent for. He came into the room chuck- 
ling with delight over this skilful exercise of 



180 WHIP AND SPUR. 

the art of deceit, in which he was himself such 
an adept, and laying his hand on the Hun's 
arm, said, " My dear fellow, I respect you. This 
has been the most brilliant dodge I ever knew, 
— capital, — capital ! " And he then went on to 
recount all that he had heard the evening be- 
fore. A large detachment of Forrest's command 
was advancing under Faulkner's leadership, and 
they doubtless had by this time a full report 
of our position, for he had met acquaintance on 
the road who had reported it to him. If we 
were able to engage a body of three thousand 
men without artillery, we might find them that 
night in Trenton, — he was confident that that 
was about their number. 

The family were now notified that they had 
been guilty of a great offence in harboring a 
known spy of the enemy ; but they insisted 
that they knew him only as a devout and active 
minister, and had no suspicion, nor could they 
believe, that he had the least knowledge of or 
interest in either army. With due warning as 
to the consequences of a repetition of their crime, 



TWO SCOUTS. 181 



they were allowed to return to their breakfast, 
and their guest was brought under guard to 
headquarters. 

Being satisfied, after a close examination of 
the report, that it would be imprudent to re- 
main so far from our camp, which could be 
best reached from Trenton by another road, we 
left a party of observation, and returned to Union 
City, directing our scout to go to the vicinity 
of Trenton and bring to our detachment any 
information he might obtain. Twelve hours af- 
ter our arrival home, the detachment returned 
with the news that Faulkner, with a large force, 
had moved toward Mayfield, Kentucky, and the 
event proved that every item of the intelligence 
we had received had been substantially correct. 

In this manner we were enabled to learn pretty 
definitely the character of any movement of the 
enemy anywhere in Western Tennessee, and so 
far as we had opportunity to investigate the 
reports they generally proved to be essentially 
true. These two scouts were worth more as a 
source of information, than would have been two 



182 WHIP AND SPUR. 

regiments of cavalry in active service. Some- 
times our Methodist friend acted under definite 
orders, but more often only according to his 
own judgment of what was necessary. 

A few days before Christmas we received word 
that Forrest in person was in Jackson, with a 
large force, and we moved against him with 
nearly the whole body of our troops, under the 
command of old A. J. himself. We reached 
Jackson at night, after three days' hard march- 
ing, only to find that Forrest's army had left 
that morning, destroying the bridges over the 
swollen rivers and making organized pursuit im- 
possible. We took up quarters for some days 
in the town, where we enjoyed the peculiarly 
lovely climate of the " sunny South " with the 
thermometer seven degrees below zero, six inches 
of snow on the ground, and a howling wind 
blowing. Our own mess was very snugly en- 
tertained at the house of a- magnate, where we 
had an opportunity to study the fitness of even 
the best Southern architecture for an Arctic win- 
ter climate. 






TWO SCOUTS. 183 



On New Year's day, as we were sitting at a 
sumptuous dinner, and mitigating so far as we 
could the annoyance to our hosts of being in- 
vaded by a rollicking party of Northern officers, 
Voisin, who had been called out, returned to 
the table to tell me that a man and a woman 
would like to see me in my room. I was not 
prompt to respond, and asked who they were. 
He replied, "0, who can tell? I suppose some- 
body with a complaint that our men have ' taken 
some hams of meat ' [" meat " being the Tennessee 
vulgate for hog flesh only], or something of that 
sort ; the man seemed to have something the 
matter with his eyes." And he gave me a large 
and expressive wink. 

Ensconced, with such comfort as large and 
rattling windows permitted, before our blazing 
fire, sat our serene Methodist friend and his 
sullen wife. Taking me aside, he told me that 
he had passed the previous evening at a private 
house between Jackson and Bolivar in religious 
exercises, which were attended by Forrest and 
officers of his command. After the devotions 



184 WHIP AND SPUR. 

there was much cheerful and unrestrained talk 
as to the plans and prospects of the future cam- 
paign, disclosing the fact that as there seemed 
no chance of doing efficient service in Tennessee, 
the whole body would move at once to Central 
Mississippi and operate in connection with the 
army in Georgia. This report, which we had 
no reason to disbelieve, decided A. J. to aban- 
don a difficult and unpromising pursuit, and to 
return to Union City and Columbus. We found, 
on our return, a communication from the head- 
quarters at Memphis to the effect that Forrest 
had crossed the railroad and gone far south 
into Mississippi. 

We had no further service of importance or 
interest in this region. " Jackson's Purchase " 
was thenceforward quite free from any consid- 
erable body of the enemy ; and when our cler- 
gyman found, a few weeks later, that we were all 
ordered to the south, he came for a settlement 
of his accounts, saying that he had been able to 
deceive his wife only ap to the time of our inter- 
view at Jackson, and as his life was no longer 



TWO SCOUTS. 185 



safe in the country, he must depart for the 
more secure region of his former home in Can- 
ada, — where let us hope that he has been al- 
lowed to answer the behests of his sacred voca- 
tion with a mind single to his pious duties, and 
that domestic suspicion no longer clouds his 
happy hearthstone. 

Happily, neither A. J. nor Forrest himself 
had further occasion for his peaceful interven- 
tion, the fortunate absence of which may have 
had to do with the notable encounter between 
these two generals at Tupelo. 




IN THE GLOAMING. 




HE sun had gone, and above the dreamy 
blue of the far-lying woods, the early 
evening had hung the sky with mellow, 
summery, twilight loveliness. 

The casements of the old house at Whitting- 
ton glowed ruddy and warm through their mar- 
vellous clustering ivy, and it was the idlest 
luxury to hang over the crumbling road - wall, 
peopling its suggestive chambers with the spirits 
of their long-gone tenants. It is a farm-house 
now, and there is no available record to tell the 
stranger the story of its more glorious days. No 
rigid history hampers the fancy, and the strolling 
lover of the by-ways and roadsides of our dear 
Mother England may let his imagination run with 
flowing rein, sweeping away the hayricks and 






IN THE GLOAMING. 187 

marigold beds, and calling back the peacocks and 
bagwigs of the halcyon days. 

Perhaps for the last time in my life I was tak- 
ing the breath of an English twilight, — sweet- 
est to those whose childhood and youth have fed 
on the rhyme and tale the green old land has 
sent to her world-wide brood, and who come, in 
riper life, to find the fancies of early years warm 
and living on every side, in hedge and field, in 
cowslip and primrose, in nightingale and lark. 
The thick-coming impressions such musing brings 
are vague and dreamy, so that there seemed, a 
shade of unreality in the quiet voice that bade 
me "Good evening," and added, "Yes, it is an 
engaging old house, and it has a story that you 
may be glad to hear." 

It was not from perversity that I turned the 
subject, but no tale of real life could have added 
interest to the fancies with which the old manse 
had clad itself in the slowly waning day. Way- 
side impressions lose their charm if too much 
considered, and, as my new companion was walk- 
ing toward Lichfield, I was glad to turn away 



188 WHIP AND SPUR. 

and join him,- — ending a long day's tramp with 
the slow and quiet gait that his age compelled. 
There was the least shade of the uncanny in his 
bearing, and his speech was timorous and gentle. 
His threadbare and seedy look betokened a na- 
tive unthrift, but there was an undercurrent of 
refinement in his mien and in his manner, and 
a trusting outlook from his large blue eyes that 
made him the fittest of companions for a summer 
evening's walk in a country filled with the min- 
gled flavor of history and romance. 

He was a man of the intensest local training. 
To him " the County of the City of Lichfield " 
was of more consequence than all Staffordshire 
besides, and far more than all England and all 
that vague entity called the World. Even the 
County of the City of Lichfield was large for 
his concentrated attachment : he knew it as 
one must know a small town in which he has 
passed the whole of a long life; but his heart 
lay within the cathedral close, and the cathe- 
dral close lay -deep within his heart, — deep and 
warm, with its history and its traditions, its ro- 



IN THE GLOAMING. 189 

mance and its reality, so interlaced that he had long- 
since ceased to ask what was real and what unreal. 
All was unreal in the sense of being of more than 
worldly consequence in his estimation, and all real 
as a part of the training of his whole life. 

To him Lichfield Cathedral was no mere pile of 
sculptured stone, built round with the facts of re- 
corded history ; it was the fairy handiwork of times 
and scenes long past, its walls raised by the hand 
of pious enthusiasm, shattered and cemented by 
the strife and blood of the civil war, hallowed by 
the returning glory of the Restoration, blessed 
by the favor of royal presence, and now made 
admirable in his daily sight by the dignity and 
grace of those holy men its dean and chapter. 

As it was the cathedral I had come to see, 
and as I had come for no architect's measure- 
ments, for no student's lore, only to bathe in 
the charmed atmosphere of its storied past, I 
had falleri upon a guide after my own heart, and 
it was as pleasant as it was easy to lend full 
credence to all he so honestly believed and told. 

In early life he had had gentler training, but 



190 WHIP AND SPUR. 

he had long been a Poor Brother of the Hos- 
pital of St. John the Baptist in Lichfield, and 
had, for many years, held, by seniority, the right 
of presenting a rose, on St. John's nativity day, 
to the heirs of William Juvenis (goldsmith), who, 
by grants made in consideration of this ceremony, 
had secured perennial prayers for the souls of his 
ancestors and a fragrant memory for his own. 

Hedged about by the traditionary customs 
and quaint observances of an ancient charitable 
foundation, deadened in a way, if you please, 
by the aristocratic pauperism of his condition, 
my gentle companion had grown to his present 
dreamy estate. 

As we reached Stow Pool, near the old parish 
church of St. Chad, he pointed out the spring 
of pure water where, twelve hundred years ago, 
this future Bishop of Lichfield — who during 
his hermit life supported himself on the milk 
of a doe — was wont to pray naked in the water, 
standing upon the stone still seen at the bottom 
of the well, and where St. Ovin heard the an- 
gels sing as his good soul passed away. 



IN THE GLOAMING. 191 

Then, with the trusting look of a little child, 
the Poor Brother went on to tell of the virtues 
and good deeds of this holy life ; — how even the 
King of the Mercians, struck with remorse for 
the crimes he had committed, visited the saint 
in person, yielded to his eloquent persuasion, be- 
came a convert to the true faith, and banished 
all idolatry from his realm; how he became the 
head of the church of Lichfield and laid its 
strong foundations of piety and faith ; and how 
his virtues so outlived him that his very tomb 
swallowed the ill-humors of diseased minds re- 
sorting to its serene presence, that the dust 
from his grave healed all ills of man and beast, 
and that the shrine built in his honor after 
his canonization was so sought by numberless 
devotees that Lichfield itself began thereupon 
to increase and flourish. 

To our left, as he ceased, the evening's lin- 
gering glow gilded the silent pool, where lay 
the unrippled reflection of the three spires of 
the cathedral, hardly more unsubstantial than 
the fairy silhouette that stood clean-cut against 



192 WHIP AND SPUR. 

the sky, and dividing with the reality the rapt 
admiration of the Poor Brother of St. John's. 

We stood by the water's edge, and he turned 
toward the phantom spires reversed within it, 
his talk wandering back to the days of the 
church's troubles, — when the cathedral close 
was a fortress, with strong walls and well-filled 
moat ; when the beautiful west gate, which only 
our own age was vile enough to destroy, kept 
stout ward against the outer world, and pro- 
tected the favored community who formed within 
the walls a county independent of Lichfield and 
of Staffordshire. Within the sacred pale no law 
had force save that of the Ecclesiastical Court, 
and then, as now, none could there be taken for 
debt or crime save on the warrant of the dean 
and chapter. 

He knew Iry heart the long list of bishops, 
and would gladly have held me to hear of the 
good deeds of Langton and Hackett. He was 
fairly launched in his favorite enthusiasm, and 
told warmly the more striking features of the 
church's history, but he told them rapidly lest 



IN THE GLOAMING. 193 

I should reach the storied pile with less than a 
full appreciation of its traditional interest. 

From his nervous lips I learned how King 
Richard II. kept Christmas revels here with a 
splendor that lavished two hundred tuns of 
wine, and roasted two thousand oxen, whose 
bones are still found in Oxenbury field hard 
'by; how Elizabeth passed three wfrole days in 
the close ; and how the solidity of its fortifica- 
tion, the consummate grace and finish of its 
architecture, the richness of its sculpture, and 
the surpassing beauty and magnificence of the 
nine windows of its lady chapel marked it as 
the crowning glory of the Western Church, 
until the dark days of the Revolution lowered. 
Then its sore trials were recounted, and I learned 
of the fanatical attack of Lord Brooke, "with 
his horde of impious Roundheads," made by 
strange fatality on St. Chad's day ; of the shoot- 
ing of Lord Brooke by " Dumb Dyott," who 
was perched in the steeple with a fowling-piece 
that now hangs over the fireplace of Colonel 
Dyott's house ; of the surrender of the close 



194 WHIP AND SPUR. 

by Lord Chesterfield ; of the sack and bout that 
followed; of the recapture by Prince Rupert. 

He told of the foul desecration by the Round- 
heads, who used every species of havoc, plun- 
der, and profanation, — palling down the sacred 
effigies which were the glory of the western front, 
hacking to pieces the • curious carvings of the 
choir, mashing the noses of the monumental 
statues, destroying the valuable evidences and 
records of the church and the city, shattering 
the glass of the costly windows, — save only 
that of the marvellous nine of the lady chapel, 
which a pious care was said to have removed 
to a place of safety. They kept courts of guard 
in the cross aisles, broke up the pavements, and 
every day hunted a cat with hounds through- 
out the church, delighting in the echoes from 
the vaulted roof; they wrapped a calf in linen, 
and " in derision and scorn of the sacrament of 
baptism," sprinkled it at the font and gave it a 
name. 

How the King, after the defeat of Naseby, 
came from Ashby-de-la-Zouche, and passed the 



IN THE GLOAMING. 195 

night in the close, — how Cromwell's defaming 
crew completed the work of demolition and dese- 
cration, and smashed the old bell called " Jesus," 
with its legend "lam the bell of Jesus, and 
Edward is our King; Sir Thomas Hey wood first 
caused me to ring," — how, finally, the chapter- 
house alone had a roof under which service 
might be said, — how the good Hackett on the 
first day of his bishopric set his own servants and 
his own coach-horses at work removing the rub- 
bish, and never tired until in eight years' time 
the magnificence of the cathedral was restored, 
except for the forever irreparable loss of the 
decorations, and especially of the lady chapel 
windows, which all the cost of the restoration 
would not have sufficed to renew, — how the 
church was reconsecrated with great pomp and 
solemnity, — all this he told me in detail, and 
he would gladly have told more, for this Poor 
Brother had made these few rich historic acres 
nearly his whole world, and had peopled it with 
all who throughout the long ages had marred it 
or had made it. To have given " two good trees " 



196 WHIP AND SPUE. 

for the rebuilding of the church was a title to 
his lasting and grateful recognition. 

But the light was fast waning, and the cathe- 
dral must be seen now or perhaps never. It was 
already past the hour for closing, but one of the 
vergers had formerly been a Poor Brother of St. 
John's, and my companion went to him to secure 
our admission. 

I stood before the west front of the cathedral, 
which was then bathed in the lingering light of 
the after-day, its great central window gleaming as 
though the altar lamps were still burning behind 
it, and the western spires almost losing them- 
selves in the sky. The quaint effigies that fill the 
niches across the whole facade lost their grotesque- 
ness in the dusk, and seemed really the sacred 
sculptures they were meant to be. Fair though 
this rich front must be at high midday, it needs 
for its full beauty the half-light of a Northern 
evening. As seen on that rarest of all evenings, it 
was a fit introduction to the subdued glory which 
greeted us in the dim religious light to which we 
entered as the great central door closed behind us. 



IN THE GLOAMING. 197 

We stood, uncovered and reverent, beneath the 
vaulted nave, looking down the long curved aisle, 
bordered by the majesty of the clustered columns, 
through the light illuminated screen of the choir, 
full upon the sculptured and gem-set alabaster 
reredos, above and beyond which stood the famed 
group of windows of the lady chapel, mellowed 
by the light of the streaming full moon. 

Rich in the blended mosaic of the floor, in the 
dimmed canopy overhead, in the lightly arched 
gallery of the triforium, in the mellow cross-lights 
of the side windows, in the sombre carvings of 
the choir, and above all in the marvellous glass 
of the chapel, it was the very perfection of a wor- 
shipful church. 

It was too nearly dark to examine the details 
of the decoration, and we wandered down the 
aisles, remarking here and there the bruised stat- 
ues of the tombs, and halting before the sleeping 
children of Chantrey to marvel how much somno- 
lent repose can be cut in chiselled stone. 

" But come," said the gentle Brother, " we have 
only light enough left for the storied glass which 



198 WHIP AND SPUR, 

alone of all the richness of the old church out- 
lived its desecration, and, as by a miracle, was 
preserved to tell these later generations of the 
higher art our forefathers' sons forgot." 

As he spoke, we stood within the charmed light 
of the nine windows of the apse, — windows which 
have perhaps no remaining equals in the world, 
and before which one can only bow in admiration 
and regret for an art that seems forever lost. 
Holding me fast by the arm, he went on : — 

" In the restoration of the church, the spandrels 
of the old windows were rebuilt, and the frames 
were set with plain glass, to the sad defacement 
of the edifice ; and so they stood for nigh two 
hundred years, no art being equal to their worthy 
replacement, and no ancient store to the supply- 
ing of so large a demand. 

" But listen, now, how the hand of Heaven shel- 
tered its own, and how true servants of the Church 
are ever guided to reclaim its lost splendor. 

"A few years ago, a canon of the cathedral, 
travelling in Flanders, wishing to contribute to 
the renewed work of restoration, visited the dis- 



IN TEE GLOAMING. 199 

mantled convent of Herkenrode in the ancient 
bishopric of Liege. Here he sought among the 
rubbish of the lumber-room for wood-carvings 
which might be used in the rebuilding of the 
prebendal stalls. His search discovered many 
boxes of colored glass, the origin of which no 
one knew, and whose existence even had been 
forgotten. Thinking to embellish some of the 
curious triangular windows above the triforium, 
he purchased the whole store for two hundred 
pounds of our money, and presented it to the dean 
and chapter as a tribute of affectionate devotion 
to the cathedral. There was more than he had 
supposed, and the large figures of some of the 
fragments indicated a coherent design. 

"This chapel was fenced off from the aisles, 
and here the canon's wife and daughter, devot- 
ing themselves to the solution of the puzzle, 
slowly pieced out the varying connections. They 
worked patiently for weeks, with a steadily in- 
creasing excitement of success, until [and here 
his grasp grew tremulous and close], lying col- 
lated on this pavement where we stand, only a 



200 WHIP AND SPUR. 

bit wanting here and there, marking the exact 
sizes of the varied openings, the grand old Lich- 
field windows, perfect as yon see them now in 
this softened moonlight, had come back to enrich 
forevermore the dear old church to whose glory 
they had shone in the bygone centuries, and whose 
sore trials their absence had so long recalled. 

" Kind stranger," said he, " this is a true tale. 
Sceptics have questioned it, but it is true ! true ! 
And I thank Heaven that it has been permitted 
to me, who have grown old in the love of this 
sacred pile, to live to see, in this crowning act 
of its restoration, the higher help the hand of 
man has had in performing its holy work." 

His upturned blue eyes were moistened with 
tears, and his voice trembled with emotion. I 
led him gently away and to the doorstep of the 
Hospital of St. John the Baptist, where we parted 
in silence, and forever. 

Supping at the Swan Inn, I took the late train 
for Liverpool and home, bringing with me an ideal 
Lichfield, to which it would perhaps have been 
rash to hold the light of a Lichfield day. 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 



N entering the Eegent Hotel at Lea- 
mington the first object that attracts 
attention, after the stuffy old porter 
who hobbles about to see some one else handle 
the luggage, is a small frame, over the smoking 
coal-fire, which contains the following notice, dec- 
orated with an old cut of a fox's mask : — 



MERRY & CO.'S HUNTING APPOINTMENTS, AND GUIDE 
TO THE DIFFERENT COVERTS. 



December 30, 1872. 



Warwickshire, — at 10.45. 



Days. 


-Meet at 


Miles 


To go through 


M. 


Goldicote House. 


11. 


Wellerbourne and Loxley. 


Tu. 


Radway Grange. 


12. 


Tachbrook and Kineton. 


W. 


Snitterfield. 


7. 


Warwick and Stratford Road. 


Th. 


Red Hill. 


13. 


Warwick and Snitterfield. 


F. 


Pebworth. 

9* 


16. 


Warwick and Stratford. 



202 



WHIP AND SPUR. 



North Warwickshire, — at 11. 



Bays. Meet at 

M. Solihull. 
Tu. Cubbington Gate. 
Th. Stoneleigli Abbey. 

F. Tile Hill. 



M. 

Tu. 
Th. 

S. 



Miles. To go through 

14. Warwick and Hatton. 
2. Lillington. 
4. On Kenilworth Koad. 
9. By Kenilworth Castle. 



Pytchley, — at 10.45. 



M. Naseby. 

Tu. Hazlebeaeh. 

W. Dingley. 

F. Cransley. 

S. Swinford. 



26. Princethorpe and Rugby. 

31. Dunchurch and Crick. 

33. Rugby and Swinford. 

36. Maidwell. 

19. Princethorpe and Rugby. 



Atherstone, — at 11. 
Coombe. 12. Bubbenhall and Wolston. 

Harrow Inn Gate. 20. Coventry and Nuneaton. 
Brinklow Station. 12. Bubbenhall and Wolston. 

Corley. 14. ' Stoneleigh and Coventry. 



Bicester, - 
Fenny Compton. 12. 

Trafford Bridge. 19. 

Hellidon. 14. 

Steeple Claydon. 40. 



-at 10.45. 

Radford and Ladbrook. 
South am and Wormleighton. 
South am and Priory Marston. 
Gaydon and Banbury. 



Twenty-two meets in the week, all within easy 
reach, by road or rail. Let us dine and decide. 
At table we will leave the menu to the waiter; 
but let him bring for consideration during the 
meal the list of meets. " Brinklow Station, twelve 
miles " ; that seems the most feasible thing in the 



FQX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 203 

catalogue for the morrow, and who has not heard 
that the Atherstone is a capital pack 1 But then 
the Pytchley is even better known, and the train 
reaches Rugby in time for the meet. Let the 
choice be decided with the help of coffee and 
cigars and possible advice, during the soothing 
digestive half-hour in the smoking-room. Din- 
ner over, wander away through the tortuous, 
dim passage that leads to the sombre hall where 
alone in English inns the twin crimes of billiards 
and smoking are permitted, and, while writhing 
under the furtive glances of the staid and middle- 
aged East-Indian who evidently knows you for 
an American, and- who is your only companion, 
decide, with your nation's ability to reach conclu- 
sions without premises, whether it shall be Pytch- 
ley or Atherstone. Don't ask your neighbor : he 
is an Englishman, and have we not been told that 
Englishmen are gruff, reticent men, who wear 
thick shells, and whose warm hearts can be 
reached only with the knife of a regular intro- 
duction] However, you must make up your 
mind what to do, and you need help which 



204 WHIP AND SPUR. 

neither the waiter nor the porter can give; the 
"gentlemanly clerk" does not exist in England 
(thank Heaven !) and you have not yet learned 
what an invaluable mine of information "Boots" 
is, — faithful, useful, helpful, and serviceable to 
the last degree. I salute him with gratitude for 
all he has done to make life in English hotels 
almost easier and more homelike than in one's 
own house. It is safe to advise all travellers to 
make him an early ally, to depend on him, to 
use him, almost to abuse him, and, finally, on 
leaving, to "remember" him. Not yet having 
come to know the Boots, I determined to throw 
myself on the tender mercies of my stern, silent 
companion, and I very simply stated my case. 
My stern, silent companion was an exception to 
the rule, and he told me all I wanted to know 
(and more than I knew I needed to know) with 
a cordiality and frankness not always to be found 
among the genial smokers of our own hotels. His 
voice was in favor of the Atherstone as being the 
most acceptable thing for the next day. 

Ford, the veterinary surgeon of Leamington, 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 205 

had, on several occasions, done good service for 
friends who had gone before me over the hedges 
of North Warwickshire, and I went to him for 
advice about a mount. Here I found that I had 
made a mistake in not engaging horses in advance. 
To get a "hunter" for the next day would be im- 
possible, but he would do what he could for a few 
days hence. All he could promise for the morn- 
ing would be to lend me a horse of his own, a 
thoroughbred mare, not up to my weight, but 
tough and wiry, and good for any amount of 
road-work. He kindly volunteered to arrange 
for our going by the first train to Coventry, only 
a couple of miles from Brinklow (it turned out 
to be nine miles), so that we should arrive fresh 
on the ground. At seven o'clock in the morning 
he came to my room to say that everything was 
arranged, and that I should find the mare at the 
station in an hour. Swallowing a glass of milk 
as a stay-stomach, — my usual habit, — I put my- 
self, for the first time since the war ended, into 
breeches and boots, and drove to the station. On 
a turn-out stood a "horse-box," one of the insti- 



206 WHIP AND SPUR. 

tutions of England, — a three-stabled freight-car 
for the transportation of horses. Paying five shil- 
lings for a horse-ticket to Coventry (only twice 
the cost of my own seat), I saw the mare snugly 
packed into one of the narrow stalls and made 
fast for the journey. Passing through a beauti- 
ful farming country, we came in due time to the 
quaint old town of Coventry, where several horse- 
boxes, coming from Birmingham and other sta- 
tions, were discharging -their freight of well-bred 
hunters. As we rode from this station another 
hard-shelled Englishman in brown top-boots and 
spotless white leather breeches accosted me pleas- 
antly, reminding me that we had come from Lon- 
don together the day before, and asking, as he 
had recognized me for an American, if he could 
be of service to me. 

"Pray how did you know that I am from 
America 1 " 

"Only by your asking if you should change 
'cars' at Rugby. An Englishman would have 
said 'carriages.'" 

"Very well; I am glad my ear-mark was no 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 207 

greater. Can you direct me to a hotel where 
I can get a bite before I go on 1 ?" 

" Certainly : you will find the Angel very com- 
fortable ; take the next street to the right, and 
you will soon reach it. Good morning ; it is nine 
miles to the meet, and I will move on slowly. 
Command me if I can help you when you come 
up." 

I did find the Angel comfortable, (as what Eng- 
lish inn is not?) and soon fortified myself with 
cold pheasant and sherry, — a compact and little- 
burdensome repast to ride upon, — served in a 
cosey old coffee-room by the neatest and most 
obliging of handmaidens. 

On the road I fell in with straggling groups of 
horsemen, in red coats and black coats, leather 
breeches and cords, white tops and black ; all 
neat and jaunty, and all wearing the canonical 
stove-pipe hat. My little mare was brisk, and I 
had no hard riding to save her for, so I passed 
a dozen or more of the party, getting from each 
one some form or other of pleasant recognition, 
and finally from a handsome young fellow on a 



208 WHIP AND SPUE. 

very spicy mount, " Excuse me, are you going 
to Brinklow'? You must turn to the right." 

Confound these Englishmen, thought I, where 
is their traditional coldness and reserve 1 And I 
reined up for a chat. 

My companion came from the vicinity of Bir- 
mingham. Like so many of his class, he devotes 
three days a week to systematic hunting, and 
he was as enthusiastic as an American boy could 
have been in telling me all I wanted to know 
about the sport. To get hold of a grown man 
who had never seen a foxhound seemed an event 
for him, and my first instructions were very agree- 
ably taken. Our road ran past the beautiful deer- 
stocked park of Coombe Abbey, w T here the green 
grass of a moist December and the thick cluster- 
ing growth of all-embracing ivy carried the fresh 
hues of our summer over the wide lawn and to 
the very tops of the trees about the grand old 
house. The few villages on our way were neither 
interesting nor pleasant, but the thatched farm- 
houses and cottages, and the wonderful ivy, and 
the charming fields and hedges were all that 
could have been asked. 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 209 

And then the roadsides ! and the stiles and the 
foot-paths, and the look of age and the richness 
of the well-kept farms ; and again and every- 
where the ivy clinging fast to each naked thing, 
and clothing it with luxuriant beauty ! 

There is in all our hearts an inherited chord 
that thrills in the presence of this dear old home 
of our race. Not this spot and not these scenes, 
but the air, the tone, the spirit of it all, — these 
are as familiar to our instincts as water to the 
hen-brooded duckling, 

Brinklow Station has the modern hideousness 
and newness of railroad stations everywhere in 
country neighborhoods, and it was pleasant to 
leave it behind and follow the gay crowd down 
a sloping and winding road into the real coun- 
try again, and into a handsome and well-kept 
park, beyond which there stood a fine old house 
of some pretension, and well set about with ter- 
raced lawn and shrubbery, — a charming English 
country-seat. 

Here my eyes were greeted with the glory of 
my first " meet," and a glory it was indeed ! 



210 WHIP AND SPUR. 

Pictures and descriptions had suggested it, but 
they had only suggested it. This was the real- 
ity, and it far exceeded my anticipation. The 
grounds were fairly alive with a brilliant com- 
pany of men and women, — happy and hearty, 
and just gathered for the day's sport. Red coats, 
white breeches, and top-boots were plenty, and 
the neat holiday air of the whole company was 
refreshing and delightful. Scattered about sin- 
gly and in groups, mounted, on foot, and in car- 
riages, were a couple of hundred people of all 
ages and of all conditions. Chatting from the 
saddle and over carriage-doors, lounging up and 
down the Drive, or looking over the hounds, the 
company were leisurely awaiting the opening of 
the ball. They had come from a circuit of twenty 
miles around, and they appeared to be mainly 
people who habitually congregate at the cover- 
side throughout the hunting-season, and to be 
generally more or less acquainted with each other. 
The element of coquetry was not absent ; but 
coquetry is apparently not a natural product of 
the English soil, and that sort of intercourse was 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 211 

not conspicuous. The same number of handsome 
young men and women would be more demon- 
strative at a similar gathering in America. A 
similar gathering, however, would not be possi- 
ble in America. We have no occasion on which 
people of all sorts come so freely and so natu- 
rally together, interested in a traditional and 
national sport, which is alike open to rich and 
poor, and meeting, not for the single occasion 
only, but several times a week, winter after win- 
ter, often for many years. Noblemen, gentlemen, 
farmers, manufacturers, professional men, snobs, 
cads, errand-boys, — everybody, in short, who 
cared to come seemed to have the right to come, 
and, so far as the hunt was concerned, seemed 
to be on an equal footing. Of course the poorer 
element was comparatively small, and mainly 
from the immediate neighborhood. The habitues 
of a hunt are seldom below the grade of well- 
to-do farmers. Servants from the house were 
distributing refreshments, riders were mounting 
their hunters, grooms were adjusting saddle- 
girths, too fiery animals were being quieted, and 



212 WHIP AND SPUE. 

there was generally an air of preparation about 
the whole assemblage. 

A little at one side, kept well together by the 
huntsman and a couple of whippers-in, were the 
hounds (the Atherstone pack), about forty of 
them, or, technically, " twenty couples," strong- 
limbed, large-eared, party-colored, wholesome- 
looking fellows. They attracted much atten- 
tion and elicited frequent commendation, for they 
were said to be the very finest pack in England, 
— as was also each of the three other packs that 
I saw. To the unskilled eye, and simply viewed 
as dogs, they were not remarkable ; but it was a 
case in which the judgment of an unskilled per- 
son could have no value. 

The horses appealed to me much more strong- 
ly. Certainly I had never before seen together 
the same number of the same average excellence; 
and some of them were fit to drive one wild with 
envy. There was, on the whole, less of the 
" blood " look than would be expected by a man 
who had got his ideas of the hunting-field from 
Leech's drawings, but there was a good deal of 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 213 

it, nevertheless, and in its perfection too ; and 
where it was wanting there was plenty of bone 
to make np for it. 

At eleven the hounds were led out to the 
cover, and the whole field followed slowly and 
irregularly and at some distance. There were 
about one hundred and fifty mounted for the 
hunt. Perhaps one third of these wore scarlet 
coats, white breeches, and top-boots ; another 
third had black coats and some of them black 
boots; and the remainder of the field was made 
up of half a dozen ladies, a few stout old gen- 
tlemen of seventy or so on stout old cobs of 
discreet age, little boys on smart ponies, farmers 
and tradesmen and their clerks mounted on what- 
ever they could get, and men of every interme- 
diate grade, and with all sorts of horses. A cer- 
tain amount of riff-raff, not mounted at all, but 
good on their pins and ready for a run, were 
hanging about for a chance to pick up a whip 
or a hat, or to catch a horse, or brush a muddy 
coat, or turn an honest shilling in any way that 
might offer in the chances of the day. Some 



214 WHIP AND SPUR. 

of these fellows, rigged out with the cast-off 
clothing of their betters, sported red coats, black 
velvet caps, and leather leggings. One added to 
all this gorgeousness the refinement of bare feet. 

The hounds were taken into the cover, a 
brambly, tangled wood near by, which had prob- 
ably been planted and made a little wilderness 
to serve as a cover for foxes. 

They soon found a fox, drove him to the open, 
and followed him out of the wood with a whim- 
pering sort of cry which was disappointing after 
the notion that the "full cry" of the books had 
given, and which is heard in the very different 
fox-hunting of our Southern woods. The run lay 
up a steepish hill, several fields wide and across 
an open country. One bold rider (not a light 
one), mounted on a staving black horse, went to 
the right of the cover, and made a splendid leap 
up hill, over a stiff-looking hedge, and landed at 
the tail of the pack. The " master " and his 
assistants had got away with the hounds. The 
rest of the field went to the left, waiting their 
turns, through a farm-gate. Once through, some 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 215 

twenty of them dashed up the , hill, cleared a 
clever hedge, and kept the pack in sight. The 
rest took an easier place, where a farm laborer had 
pulled away the stakes by which a gap had been 
filled. Here there was much very light jumping, 
and much more of waiting until predecessors had 
made it lighter. In the mean time other gaps 
were found, and it was not many minutes before 
all were through ; but during these minutes the 
fox, the hounds, and the harder riding men were 
putting a wide space between themselves and us, 
who were at the tail of the field. Yet there 
were some in the party who did not look like 
laggards, and whose horses were good enough 
for any work such a country could give them. 

Even when across the gap, these men went 
with the rest of us, by gates and lanes, toward 
a point to which it was thought by the know- 
ing ones that the fox would double, — and the 
knowing ones were right. Gradually, as their 
judgment indicated, they left the roads and took 
to the fields. This course was taken by three 
well-mounted young ladies. I followed the gate- 



216 WHIP AND SPUE. 

openers for about half an honr, when, coming 
out on a high-road, I concluded that, with seven- 
teen miles to ride home, it was only just to my 
little mare to give the thing up and head for 
Leamington. The hounds were far away on my 
right and quite out of sight. 

Having come to look on and learn, I had prob- 
ably seen and heard all that day had in store 
for me, — surely enough for one's first day at 
fox-hunting. When I had ridden for a few min- 
utes I saw, far across the fields, that the hounds 
had turned to the left and were making for my 
road. Pressing forward, I came up in time to 
see them cross to the front, and go scurrying 
away over the grass, nosing out the scent as they 
ran. There had been a check, and " the field " 
was well up. The road was lower than the fields, 
and was bordered by a ditch at each side. From 
this the ground rose a little, and on each bank 
stood a three-and-a-half-foot thorn hedge. Nei- 
ther leap was difficult, but the one out of the 
road was not easy. Here I sat and saw fully a 
hundred horsemen, dressed in the gay colors of 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 217 

the hunting-field and mounted as men rarely are 
mounted out of England, all, horses as well as 
men, eager and excited in the chase, flying over 
hedge and ditch into the carriage-way and over 
ditch and hedge into the higher field, beyond and 
away, headlong after the hounds, every man for 
himself, and every man for the front, and on 
they went over another hedge, and out of sight. 
In the thick of the flight were two ladies, rid- 
ing as well and as boldly as the men, and two 
men w T ere brushing their hats in the road, their 
empty saddles keeping well up with the run. 
More than satisfied with this climax of my first 
da} T 's experience, I trotted out for home. The re- 
sult of the run I never heard, and I leave its 
description where I lost sight of it. A mile far- 
ther on I did see a fagged-looking fox making 
his rapid way across my road again, and sneak- 
ing off under the hedge toward a thicket, and I 
halted to listen to what sounded like the horn 
of a huntsman at check over the hill to the 
left ; but possibly the conclusion I drew was not 
a correct one. 
10 



218 WHIP AND SPUR. 

I wish that words could give an idea of the 
life and action of the headlong flight I had just 
seen ; but the inadequacy of all I had read to 
convey it to me makes it seem useless to try. 
Photography and description may, in a measure, 
supply the place of travel ; but he who would 
realize the most thrilling intensity of eager horse- 
manship must stand in a hedge-bound English 
lane, and see with his own eyes, and for the 
first time in his life, a hundred gayly dressed 
and splendidly mounted fox-hunters flashing at 
full speed across his path ; and it is worth the 
while to see. 

Rain never fell on a more lovely country than 
that part of Warwickshire through which my wet 
way lay. For ten miles of the seventeen it 
rained, gently as it rains with us in April ; nor 
is our grass more green in April than this was 
in Christmas week. The all-prevailing ivy was 
filled with berries, and the laurustinus was al- 
ready in bloom. 

No born Englishman could have cared less for 
the soaking rain; and, wet to the skin, tired to 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 219 

the bone, and stiff to the marrow, I have rarely- 
been more exuberant than when I gradually re- 
gained the use of my legs in the half-mile walk 
to the hotel, resolving that not even the glories 
of American citizenship should ever keep me 
away from England in winter were I only able 
to afford the luxury of regular hunting. But 
the exuberance was moral rather than physical. 
I had not been so tired for years, — stiff as an 
old horse, after over thirty miles of really hard 
riding (the last seventeen miles in two hours). 
The cure was a hot bath and a dish of hot soup, 
followed by. a log-like sleep of two hours on a sofa 
before a blazing hot fire, a sharp half-hour's walk, 
a very plain dinner, and a couple of hours' chat 
with my interested East-Indiaman in the smok- 
ing-room : the cure was complete ; and all that 
was left of the day's sport was its brilliant rec- 
ollection. 

My second day was near Stratford-on-Avon, — 
on Ay-\ox\, the misguided English call it. The 
meet was to be at Goldicote House, one of the 



220 WHIP AND SPUR. 

" fixtures " of the Warwickshire Hunt. There 
were about a hundred persons, including a few 
ladies, and one little bareheaded "blue -coat" 
school-boy (from Charles Lamb's school), who, 
with his folded umbrella, long skirt, low shoes, 
and yellow hose, was in for as much sport as his 
Christmas holiday could give him. As a further 
penalty for want of forethought, I was reduced 
to riding a friend's coach horse. However, the 
reduction was not great, for whether by early 
instruction or by inheritance, he was more than 
half a hunter, and gave me a capital look at the 
whole day's chase ; while his owner, on a most 
charming black blood mare, being out of con- 
dition for hard riding, kindly applied himself 
to urging me to severer work than one likes to 
do with a borrowed horse. He introduced me to 
a venerable old gentleman in a time-and-weather- 
stained red coat, velvet cap, and well-used nether 
gear, mounted on a knowing-looking old gray, 
and attended by his granddaughter. He could 
not have been less than eighty years old, and 
his days of hard riding were over; but constant 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 221 

hunting exercise every winter for over sixty years 
had protected him wonderfully well against the 
ravages of time, and it is rare to see an Ameri- 
can of sixty so hale and hearty, and so cheerful 
and jolly. I was told that if I would take him 
for my leader, I would see more of the run than 
I could in any other way with such a mount as 
I had. He seemed to know the habits of the 
foxes of South Warwickshire as thoroughly as he 
did every foot-path and gate of the country, and 
he led us by cross-cuts to the various points to 
which Reynard circled, so that we often had the 
whole field in sight. It was not an especially 
interesting day, and the fox got away at last, 
among a tangle of railway lines that blocked our 
passage. My old mentor, who had given me 
much valuable instruction in the details of hunt- 
ing, was vastly disgusted at the result, and broke 
out with, " Ah ! it 's all up with old England, I 
doubt ; these confounded railways have killed 
sport. There 's no hunting to be had any lon- 
ger, for their infernal cutting up the country in 
this way. I 've hunted with these hounds under 



222 WHIP AND SPUR. 

fifteen different masters, but I 've about done, 
and I sha' n't lose much, — it *s all up. How- 
ever, I suppose we could never pay the interest 
on the national debt without the railways ; but 
it 's all up with hunting." At that, he called 
away the young lady, bade me a melancholy 
"good-by," and rode half sadly home. I gal- 
loped back to Stratford with my handsome old 
host, — a little more knowing in the ways of the 
field, but without yet having had a fair taste of 
the sport. 

Seven miles from Peterborough, in the dismal 
little village of Wansford, near the borders of 
Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, is, per- 
haps, the only remaining old posting-inn in Eng- 
land that is kept up in the unchanged style of 
the ante-railroad days. The post-horses are gone, 
but the posting-stables are filled with hunters ; 
the travelling public have fled to the swifter 
lines, and Wansford is forever deserted of them ; 
but the old Haycock keeps up its old cheer, and 
Tom Percival, who boasts that he has had the 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 223 

Princess Victoria for a guest, and has slept five 
dukes in one night, has little occasion to com- 
plain of neglect. The good wine that needs no 
bush still makes his cellar known, and no one 
should criticise English cooking until he has 
dined once at the Haycock. Nowhere is the 
inn-maid of whom we have read so much to be 
found in such simple, tidy, and courtesying per- 
fection ; and nowhere, in short, can one find so 
completely the solid comfort of hostelry life. 
Half old farm-house and half wayside-inn ; with 
a marvellous larder, through whose glass-closed 
side the guest sees visions of joints and jams 
and pastry in lavish profusion ; backed by a 
stable-yard where boys are always exercising 
good horses ; and flanked by a yardful of quaint 
clipped yews, — the old house at Wansford (in 
spite of its dull-looking road front) is worth a 
visit from those who would get out of the sight 
and sound of steam, and see the old, old coun- 
try life of England. The visitor is not num- 
bered and billeted and pigeon-holed, as in the 
modern hotel ; but the old fiction of host and 



224 WHIP AND SPUR. 

guest is well kept up. Your coming should be 
announced in advance ; and you are received as 
in some sort a member of the family, whose 
ways are made to conform more or less to the 
wishes of yourself and your convives, mainly 
young swells from London, who are few, and who 
are there, as you are, not for business, but for 
rest, good living, and regular sport. Three packs 
of hounds are within reach ; and on the days 
when none of the meets is near, there is always 
the " larking " — the training of young horses 
— to supply a good substitute, so far as the 
riding goes. One who cares for hunting pure 
and simple, rather than for the gayer life of 
Leamington and Cheltenham, cannot do better 
than to make the season, or a part of it, at the 
Haycock, with regularly engaged horses for as 
many days in the week as he may choose to 
ride. It costs, — but it pays. One is none the 
less welcome among the guests for being an 
American. 

I there had a day with the George Fitz William 
hounds. Not being, as yet, quite at home in the 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 225 

field, I took a wise old horse, " Cock Robin," who 
was well up to my weight, and who, as Percival 
told me, would teach me more than I could teach 
him. He was sent on early with the other hunt- 
ers, and I took a " hack " to ride to cover. We 
were a party of four, and we went through the 
fields and the lawns and the rain, to where the 
meet was fixed for eleven o'clock, at Barnwell 
Castle, a fine old Norman ruin, — square and low, 
with four large corner towers draped in magnifi- 
cent ivy. It was a dreary morning, and not more 
than sixty were out ; but among these, as always, 
there were ladies, and there was more than the 
usual proportion of fine horses. One cover was 
drawn blank, and we moved to another, where 
a fox was found, and whence the run was sharp 
and too straight for a prudent novice to see very 
much of it ; and it was some minutes before Cock 
Robin and his rider came up with the hounds, 
who had come to a check in a large wood. 
Throughout the day there was a good deal of 
waiting about different covers, between which 
the fox ran back and forth. Finally he broke 
10* o 



226 WHIP AND SPUE. 

away for a long, quick burst over the fields, 
which lay to the left of a farrn-road down which 
we were riding, and which was flanked by a high 
and solid-looking hedge. Near the head of the 
party was a well-mounted blonde of seventeen, 
who had hitherto seemed to avoid the open coun- 
try and to keep prudently near to her mother and 
her groom. The sight of the splendid run, fast 
leaving us behind, was too much for her, and she 
turned straight for the hedge, clearing it with a 
grander leap than I had seen taken that day, 
and flying on over hedges and ditches in the 
direct wake of the hounds. A young German 
who followed her said, as we rode back to the 
Haycock, "It is vort to come from America or 

from Owstria to see zat lofely Lady go over 

ze cowntry " ; and it was. 

Luck often favors the timid; Cock Robin and 
I were quite alone — he disgusted, and I half 
ashamed with my prudence — when the fox, who 
had found straight running of no avail, came 
swerving to the right over the crest of a distant 
hill, closely followed by the hounds, and, in splen- 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 227 

did style, by the first flight of the field. Soon 
he crossed a brook which was fenced in with 
rails, and the horsemen all had to make a long 
detour, so that I, who had been last, now became 
first. I had the fox and the hounds all to my- 
self; my horse was fresh, and the way was easy. 
My monopoly lasted only a moment, but it was 
not a moment of tranquillity. Finding an open 
gate and bridge, I followed the pack into a large 
low field, surrounded on three sides by the wide 
brook. The fox was turned by this and ran to 
the right along the bank; at the corner of the 
field he turned again to the right, still keeping 
by the edge of the stream ; this gave the hounds 
an immense advantage, and cutting off the angle, 
they came so closely upon him that with still 
another turn of the brook ahead of him, he had 
but one chance for his life, and that was a des- 
perate one for a tired fox to consider. He did not 
consider, but went slap at the brook, and cleared 
it with a leap of nearly twenty feet. The fore- 
most hounds whimpered for a moment on the 
bank before they took to the water, and when 



228 WHIP AND SPUR. 

they were across Reynard was well out of sight, 
and they had to nose out his trail afresh. He 
brought them again to a check, and finally, after 
half an hour's skirmishing, he ran down a railway 
cutting in the wake of a train, and got away. 

Incidentally, here was an opportunity for an 
English gentleman to show more good temper 
and breeding than it is one's daily lot to see. 
He was one of a bridgeful of horsemen watching 
the hounds as they vainly tried to unravel the 
fox's scent from the bituminous trail of the loco- 
motive, when, full of eager curiosity, one of the 
ladies, middle-aged and not "native and to the 
manner born," but not an American, rode directly 
on to his horse's heels. To the confusion of my 
lady, the horse, like a sensible horse as he was, 
resented the attack with both his feet. His rider 
got him at once out of the way, and then re- 
turned, bowing his venerable head in regretful 
apology, and trusting that no serious harm had 
been done. "How can you ride such a kicking 
brute ! " was the gracious acknowledgment of his 
forbearance. 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 229 

In this storied little island one is never for long 
out of the presence of places on the traditions 
of which our life-long fancies have been fed. Our 
road home lay past the indistinct mass of rubbish, 
clustered round with ivy and with the saddest 
associations, which was once Fotheringay Castle; 
and as we turned into the village my companions 
pointed out the still serviceable but long-unused 
"stocks" where the minor malefactors of the 
olden time expiated their offences. 

We reached the Haycock at three, a moist but 
far from unpleasant body of tired and dirty men, 
having ridden, since nine in the morning, over 
fifty-five miles, mostly in the rain, and often in 
a shower of mud splashed by galloping hoofs. 
By six o'clock we were in good trim for dinner, 
and after dinner for a long, cosey talk over the 
events of the day, and horses and fox-hunting in 
general. My own interest in the sport is confined 
mainly to its equestrian side, and I am not able 
to give much information as to its details. Any 
stranger must be impressed with the firm hold 
it has on the affections of the people, and with 



230 WHIP AND SPUE. 

the little public sympathy that is shown for the 
rare . attempts that are made to restrict its rights. 

It would seem natural that the farmers should 
be its bitter opponents. It can hardly be a cheer- 
ful sight, in March, for a thrifty man to see a 
crowd of mad horsemen tearing through his 
twenty acres of well-wintered wheat, filling the 
air with a spray of soil and uprooted plants. 
But let a non-riding reformer get up after the 
annual dinner of the local Agricultural Associa- 
tion and suggest that the rights of tenant-farmers 
have long enough lain at the mercy of their land- 
lord and his fox-hunting friends, with the rabble 
of idle sports and ruthless ne'er-do-weels who fol- 
low at their heels, and that it is time for them to 
assert themselves and try to secure the prohibi- 
tion of a costly pastime, which leads to no good 
practical result, and the burdens of which fall so 
heavily on the producing classes, — and then see 
how his brother farmers will second his efforts. 
The very man whose wheat was apparently ruined 
will tell him that in March one would have said 
the whole crop was destroyed, but that the stir- 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 231 

ring up seemed to do it good, for he had never 
before seen such an even stand on that field. 
Another will argue that while hunting does give 
him some extra work in the repair of hedges and 
gates, and while he sometimes has his fields torn 
up more than he likes, yet the hounds are the 
best neighbors he has ; they bring a good market 
for hay and oats, and, for his part, he likes to get 
a day with them himself now and then. Another 
raises a young horse when he can, and if he turns 
out a clever fencer, he gets a much larger price 
for him than he could if there were no hunting 
in the country. Another has now and then lost 
poultry by the depredations of foxes, but he never 
knew the master to refuse a fair claim for dam- 
ages ; for his part, he would scorn to ask compen- 
sation • he likes to see the noble sport, which is 
the glory of England, flourishing, in spite of 
modern improvements. At this point, and at 
this stage of the convivial cheer, they bring in 
the charge at Balaklava, and other evidences that 
the noble sport, which is the glory of old Eng- 
land, breeds a race of men whose invincible daring 



232 WHIP AND SPUR. 

always has won and always shall win her honor 
in the field; — and Long live the Queen, and 
Here 's a health to the Handley Cross Hunt, and 
Confusion to the mean and niggardly spirit that 
is filling the country with wire fences and that 
would do away with the noble sport which is 
the glory of old England ! Hear ! hear ! ! And 
so it ends, and half the company, in velvet caps, 
scarlet coats, leathers and top-boots, will be early 
on the ground at the first meet of the next 
autumn, glad to see their old cover-side friends 
once more, and hoping for a jolly winter of such 
healthful amusements and pleasant intercourse as 
shall put into their heads and their hearts and 
into their hearty frames and ruddy faces a tenfold 
compensation for the trifling loss they may sustain 
in the way of broken gates and trampled fields. 

I saw too little to be able to form a fair opinion 
as to the harm done; but when once the run 
commences no more account is made of wheat, 
which is carefully avoided when going at a slow 
pace, than if it were so much sawdust; fences 
are torn down, and there is no time to replace 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 233 

them ; if gates are locked, they are taken off the 
hinges or broken ; if sheep join the crowd in an 
enclosure and follow them into the road, no one 
stops to see that they are returned : we are after 
the hounds, and sheep must take care of them- 
selves. I saw one farmer, in an excited manner, 
open the gates of his kitchen-garden and turn 
the hounds and twenty horsemen through it as 
the shortest way to where he had seen the fox 
go ; his womenfolk eagerly calling " Tally-ho ! " to 
others who were going wrong. I have never 
seen a railroad train stopped because of the con- 
ductor's interest in a passing hunt, but I fancy 
that is the only thing in England that does not 
stop when the all-absorbing interest is once awak- 
ened. 

Whatever may be the effect on material inter- 
ests, the benefit of this eager, vigorous, outdoor 
life on the health and morals of the people is most 
unmistakable. Such a race of handsome, hale, 
straight-limbed, honest, and simple-hearted men 
can nowhere else be found as in the wide class that 
passes as much of every wunter as is possible in 



234 WHIP AND SPUE. 

regular fox-hunting; and to make an application 
of their example, we could well afford to give over 
many of our fertile fields to ruthless destruction, 
and many of our fertile hours to the most sense- 
less sport, if it would only replace our dyspeptic 
stomachs, sallow cheeks, stooping shoulders, and 
restless eagerness with the hale and hearty and 
easy-going life and energy of our English cousins. 
Hardly enough women hunt in England to con- 
stitute an example ; but those who do are such 
models of health and freshness as to make one 
wish that more women had the benefit of such 
amusement both there and here. It is very com- 
mon to see men of over sixty following the hounds 
in the very elite of the field ; they seem still in the 
vigor of youth. At seventy many are yet regular 
at their work ; and it is hardly remarkable when 
one finally hangs up his red coat only at the age 
of eighty. Considering all this, it almost becomes 
a question whether, patriotism to the contrary 
notwithstanding, it would not be a good thing for 
a prosperous American, instead of settling down at 
the age of forty-five to a special partnership and a 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 235 

painful digestion, to take a smaller income where 
it would bring more comfort, and by a judicious 
application of the pig-skin to rehabilitate his en- 
feebled alimentation. 

Fox-hunting is a costly luxury if one goes well 
mounted and well appointed. It can hardly be 
made cheap, even when one lives in his own 
house and rides his own horses. With hotel bills 
and horse-hire, it costs still more. As an occa- 
sional indulgence it is always a good investment. 
My own score at the Haycock was as follows, — by 
way of illustration, and because actual figures are 
worth more than estimates. (I was there from 
Thursday afternoon until Sunday morning, went 
out with a shooting-party on Friday, dined out on 
Friday night, and hunted on Saturday.) 

THE HAYCOCK INN. 

s. d. 

Jan. 2. Dinner and wine, 10 6 

Bed and fire, 3 6 

" 3. Breakfast, 2 6 

Apartments,* bed and fire, . . . .50 
Attendance, | 16 

* The run of the house. 

■f* We are apt to consider this a petty swindle, but it has the 
advantage that you get what you pay for. 



236 WHIP AND SPUE. 

£ s. d, 
Jan. 4. Breakfast, 2 6 

Dinner and wine, . . . . . 10 6 

Apartments, bed and fire, 5 6 

Attendance, 16 

" 5. Breakfast, .26 

Stable. 
Conveying luggage from station, ... 26 

Dog-cart to Sharks Lodge, 10 6 

" " " Oundle, . ' . . . . 12 6 
" " ". Peterborough, . . . • .80 

Thomas Percival. 
Jan. 4. Hire of hunter to Barnwell, . . . 4 4 

hack "i* .... 10 6 

Eight pounds, twelve shillings, and sixpence ; 
which being interpreted means $ 47.30 in the 
lawful currency of the United States. The hunter 
and hack for one day cost $ 23.52. 

An American friend living with his family in 
Leamington (much more cheaply than he could 
live at home), kept two hunters and a hack, and 
hunted them twice a week for the whole season 
(nearly six months) at a cost, including the loss on 
his horses, which he sold in the spring, of less 
than $ 1,500. I think this is below the average 
expense. 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 237 

The cost of keeping up a pack of hounds is 
very heavy. The hounds themselves, a well-paid 
huntsman, two or three whippers-in, two horses* 
a day for each of these attendants (hunting four 
days a week, this would probably require four 
horses for each man), and no end of incidental 
expenses, bring the cost to fully $ 20,000 per 
annum. This is sometimes paid wholly or in part 
by subscription and sometimes entirely by the 
Master of the Hounds. One item of my friend's 
expenses at Leamington was a subscription of 
ten guineas each to the Warwickshire, North 
Warwickshire, Atherstone, and Pytchley hunts. 
Something of this sort would be necessary if 
one hunted for any considerable time with any 
subscription pack, but an occasional visitor is 
not expected to contribute. 

A stranger participating in the sport need only 
be guided by common modesty and common- 
sense. However good a horseman he may be, 
he cannot make a sensation among the old stagers 
of the hunting-field. Probably he will get no 
commendation of any sort. If he does, it will be 



238 WHIP AND SPUE. 

for keeping out of the way of others, — taking 
always the easiest and safest road that will bring 
him well up with the hounds, not flinching when 
a desperate leap must be taken, and following (at 
a respectful distance) a good leader, rather than 
trying to take the lead himself. However prom- 
ising the prospect may be, he had better not do 
anything on his own hook ; if he makes a conspic- 
uous mistake, he will probably be corrected for it 
in plainer English than it is pleasant to hear. 

One of the memorable days of my life was the 
day before New- Year's. Ford had secured me a 
capital hunter, a well- clipped gelding, over six- 
teen hands high, glossy, lean, and wiry as a racer. 
"You 've got a rare mount to-day, sir," said the 
groom as he held him for me to get up ; and a 
rare dismount I came near having in the little 
measure of capacity with which Master Dick and 
I commenced our acquaintance, before we left the 
Regent. He was one of those horses whose spirits 
are just a little too much for their skins, and all 
the way out he kept up a restless questioning of 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 239 

his prospect of having his own way. Still he was 
in all this, as in his manner of doing his work 
when he got into the open country, such a perfect 
counterpart of old Max, who had carried me for 
two years in the Southwest, that I was at home 
at once. If I had had a hunter made to order, I 
could not have been more perfectly suited. 

The meet (North Warwickshire) was at Cub- 
bington Gate, only two miles from Leamington, 
and a very gay meet it was. The road was filled 
with carriages, and there was a goodly rabble on 
foot. About three hundred, in every variety of 
dress, were mounted for the hunt, a dozen or so of 
ladies among them. Three of these kept well up 
all day, and one of them rode very straight. The 
hounds were taken to a wood about a mile to the 
eastward of Cubbington, where they soon found a 
fox, which led us a very straight course to Prince- 
thorpe, about three miles to the northeast. 

I had done little fencing for seven or eight 
years, and the sort of propulsion one gets in being 
carried over a hedge is sufficiently different from 
the ordinary impulses of civil life to suggest at 



240 WHIP AND SPUE. 

first the element of surprise. Consequently, 
though our initial leap was a modest one, I landed 
with only one foot in the stirrup and with one 
hand in the mane ; but I now saw that Dick was 
but another name for Max, and this one moderate 
failure was enough to recall the old tricks of the 
craft. As the opportunity would perhaps never 
come again, this one was not to be neglected, 
and I resolved to have one fair inside view of real 
fox-hunting. Dick was clearly as good a horse as 
was out that day ; the leaping was less than that 
to which we were used among the worm-fences, 
fallen timber, and gullies of Arkansas and Ten- 
nessee; and there was but a plain Anglo-Saxon 
name for the only motive that could deter me 
from making the most of the occasion. Mr. Lant, 
the Master of the Hounds, was not better mounted 
for his lighter weight than was I for my fourteen 
stone ; and his position as well as his look indi- 
cated that he would probably go by the nearest 
practicable route to where the fox might lead, so 
we kept at a safe distance behind him and well in 
his wake. The hesitation and uncertainty which 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 241 

had at first confused my bridle-hand being re- 
moved, my horse, recognizing the changed position 
of affairs, settled down to his work like a well- 
trained and sensible but eager beast as he was. 
From the covert to Princethorpe we took seven 
fences and some small ditches, and we got there 
with the first half-dozen of the field, both of us 
in higher spirits than horse and rider ever get 
except by dint of hard going and successful fen- 
cing. 

Here there was a short check, but the fox was 
soon routed out again and made for Waveley 
Wood, a couple of miles to the northwest. 

Waveley Wood is what is called in England a 
" biggish bit of timber," and the check here w T as 
long enough to allow the whole field to come 
up. As we sat chatting and lighting our cigars, 
" Tally-ho ! " was called from the other side of 
the cover, and we splashed through a muddy 
cart-road and out into the open just as the 
hounds were well away. Now was a ride for dear 
life. Every one had on all the speed the heavy 
ground would allow. In front of us was a " bull- 
11 r 



242 WHIP AND SPUE. 

finch " (a neglected hedge, out of which strong 
thorny shoots of several years' growth have run 
up ten or twelve feet above it). I had often 
heard of bullfinches, and no hunting experience 
could be complete without taking one. It was 
some distance around by the gate, the pace was 
strong, and the spiny fringe had just closed be- 
hind -Mr. Lant's red coat as he dropped into the 
field beyond. " Follow my leader " is a game 
that must be boldly played ; so, settling my hat 
w r ell down, holding my bridle-hand low, and cov- 
ering my closed eyes with my right elbow, with 
the whip-hand over the left shoulder, I put my 
heart in my pocket and went at it, and through 
it with a crash ! An ugly scratch on the fleshy 
part of the right hand was the only damage done, 
and I was one of the very few near the pack. 
Dick and I w T ere now up to anything ; we made 
very light of a thick tall hedge that came next 
in order, and we cleared it like a bird ; but we 
landed in a pool of standing water, covering 
deeply ploughed ground, the horse's forefeet 
sinking so deeply that he could not get them 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 243 

out in time, and our headway rolled us both 
over in the mud, I flat on my back. Dick got 
up just in time for his pastern to strike me in 
the face as I was rising, giving me a cut lip, a 
mouthful of blood, and a black and blue nose- 
bridge. My appearance has, on occasions, been 
more respectable and my temper more serene 
than as I ran, soiled and bleeding, over the 
ploughed ground, calling to some workmen to 
"catch my horse." 

I was soon up and away again. There seemed 
some' confusion in the run, and the master being 
out of sight, I followed one of the whips as he 
struck into a blind path in a wood. It was a 
tangled mass of briers, but he went in at full 
pace, and evidently there was no time to be lost. 
At the other side of the copse there was a set 
of low bars, and beyond this a small, slimy ditch. 
My leader cleared the bars, but his horse's hind 
feet slipped on the bank of the ditch, and he fell 
backwards with an ugly kind of sprawl that I had 
no time to examine, for Dick took the leap easily 
and soon brought me into a field where, on a little 



244 WHIP AND SPUR. 

hillock, and quite alone, stood the huntsman, dis- 
mounted, holding the dead fox high in his left 
hand, while with his long-leashed hunting-crop 
he kept the hungry and howling pack at bay. 
The master soon came up, as did about a dozen 
others, including a bright little boy on a light 
little pony. The fox's head (mask), tail (brush), 
and feet (pads) were now cut off and distributed 
as trophies under the master's direction. The 
carcass was then thrown to the pack, that fought 
and snarled over it until, in a twinkling, the last 
morsel had disappeared. This was the "death," 
— by no means the most engaging part of the 
amusement. From the find to the killing was 
only twenty-five minutes, into which had been 
crowded more excitement and more physical 
happiness than I had known for many a long 
day. 

The second cover drawn was not far away. 
With this fox we had two hours' work, mainly 
through woods at a walk and with the hounds 
frequently at fault, but with some good leaping. 
Finally he was run to earth and abandoned. 



FOX-HUNTING IN ENGLAND. 245 

We then went to a cover near Bubbenhall, but 
found no fox, and then, with the same luck, to 
another east of Baggington. It was now nearly 
four o'clock, growing dusk, and beginning to rain. 
The hounds started for their kennels, and Dick 
and I took a soft bridle-path skirting the charm- 
ing road that leads, under such ivy-clad tree- 
trunks and between such hedges as no other land 
can show, through Stoneleigh Village and past 
Stoneleigh Abbey to Leamington, and a well- 
earned rest. 

My memorandum for that day closes : " Horse, 
£2 12 s. Qd.; Fees, 2 s.; and well worth the 
money." 



THE END. 



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HECKMAN lil 1 

RINDERY INC. |«1 J 

MAY 92 

N. MANCHESTER, 
Indiana 46962 



